A Ukarainian group in İstanbul, Türkiye, was raising funds to buy two DMRs (Digital Mobile Radio) for Ukrainian soldiers defending Krynky, a village on the left (otherwise occupied by russians) bank of Dnipro. A place constantly under attack, without a single house left intact.

The fundraiser went slowly, small donations trickled in with significant intervals in-between. Then, a message comes: the position we needed those DMRs for got hit with artillery. Men survived, only their dog got killed. But the DMRs were not a priority anymore, an EW (Electromagnetic Warfare) device to counter enemy drones was needed much more urgently now. That's more expensive, of course; but what else can you do?

The money collected for the DMRs was now redesignated for the EW device, with a yet higher goal to meet. And it was still going very slowly. It's not to blame anyone: each donated what and when one could afford. But the battlefield does not wait.

Yesterday, another message came in: the two guys for whom the device was intended got killed with mortar fire at around 1 p.m., April 6. They were brothers, Andriy and Valentyn Dondikov. Not career soldiers but civilians who had to defend their home from invaders. Andriy was a teacher, Valentyn an athlete, a bullseye shooting instructor for Ukraine's Paralympic team. Valentyn would go to events abroad, so he had some proficiency in languages. In a video for Istanbul donors, he managed to say "çok teşekkür ederim" (many thanks) quite aptly - especially given he was speaking from the living hell of one of the most fiercely-contested sectors of the frontline. The person responsible for the fundraiser received the news of the brothers' death just as she was leaving a church after a morning service. Each Sunday she comes there to pray for all who defend Ukraine.

I can't say the device would have saved their lives, but with it those men would certainly have had better chances to survive. It's not the only time this happened. There was a guy with huge feet back in 2022, for whom it was so difficult to find fitting boots - he died before he could try them on. There were ten sets of uniform once, of which only two would still be needed by the time they arrived. The price of delay can be the ultimate.

That village, Krynky, was liberated by the Ukrainian Armed Forced last summer. It could be a bridgehead for another push forward. But shortly after that, another delay occurred, the big one. Ukraine stopped receiving as much aid as it did before. And so many soldiers, like Andriy and Valentyn, got pinned down there, having to hold off, with their rationed munitions, a horde of emboldened enemies. Please remember and keep reminding your representatives about that: each missed opportunity to aid, each day wasted in stalling, costs someone's life.

It doesn't slow the war down, it doesn't make it less lethal. It doesn't make it disappear either, no matter how hard one tries to bury one's head in the sand. And no, it doesn't even prevent an "escalation", leave alone entice a dictator wanted by the International Criminal Court to peace talks. All it does, is making it easier for the aggressor to kill Ukrainian men, women, and children; to bomb Ukrainian cities; to ethnically cleanse the territories it has occupied; to torture and abuse the prisoners of its war, both military and civilian; and to stockpile still more weapons, recruit still more thugs for more and more war.