“We military and civilians today are one team working to ensure that Kharkiv remains a free Ukrainian city!” says 50-year-old agricultural entrepreneur Vsevolod Kozhemiako. In April 2022, he created the Charter volunteer unit, which defended positions near Kharkiv, and then, together with the Armed Forces, reached the Russian border.
The series about this unit is included in the interview project entitled Country of Heroes and prepared jointly by the Forbes Ukraine magazine and the Starlight Media company. For the filming of this series, the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) provided protective equipment, obtained through the joint efforts of UNESCO headquarters and the International Federation of Journalists. The authors of the project were Volodymyr Fedoryn and Borys Davydenko.
“Country of Heroes is a video project of Forbes Ukraine about how business works during the war. Our heroes are businessmen, volunteers, companies whose activities during the war became a historical example of resistance and the will to victory. Forbes Ukraine and Starlight Media teams went to Kharkiv Region for filming “in the fields” even before the liberation of these territories by the Armed Forces and voluntary formations of territorial defense. The opportunity to receive protection from the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine became not only a means of strengthening the security of our employees, but also, to a certain extent, of support in their work. Thanks to everyone involved. Glory to Ukraine!” Forbes Ukraine producer Valeriya Chachybaya said in a comment to NUJU.
Vsevolod Kozhemiako is the founder and CEO of the Agrotrade group, which is among the TOP-25 Ukrainian companies with the largest land bank. Immediately after the start of the invasion of the Russian Federation in the spring of 2022, Vsevolod Kozhemiako created and headed the Charter volunteer unit, which included yesterday’s students, managers, and traders. Charter took an active part in the defense of Kharkiv in the spring and summer and in the liberation of Kharkiv Region in September 2022.
“There is the 127th brigade of the territorial defense, it includes six battalions and our voluntary formation of the territorial community. Most of the members of our community are civilians. The Law On the Basics of National Resistance was developed to enable people who are not ready to join the regular defense forces (due to health, age, or psychological reasons) to defend the Motherland with weapons in their hands,” Vsevolod Kozhemiako told the authors of the project.
He told how the community was created. The territorial community holds meetings to appoint the head of the formation. This is confirmed with a protocol signed by the head of the community and the military commissar. This person is checked by the police and the Security Service of Ukraine, after which the commander of the territorial defense of Ukraine appoints them as the head of the formation. Then this leader concludes contracts with the fighters. Fighters have all social guarantees, but they do not have a salary and can leave the formation at any time.
The unit works under the NATO standards. Part of the fighters of the Charter community are employees of the Kozhemiako’s company. Vsevolod Kozhemiako says that he “re-discovered these people for himself.”
“When we arrived at the positions, the first few weeks were hell here. It was simply continuous shelling. It was difficult for civilians. But at that time, Ukrainian boys were fighting in Mariupol, we knew about it, and their resilience gave us the strength to stand and not consider ourselves heroes,” says Vsevolod Kozhemiako.
The name of the voluntary unit, Charter, was invented by the representative of the unit, famous Ukrainian writer Serhii Zhadan. The name is associated with both Kharkiv [in Ukrainian, the word Charter is transliterated as Khartiya. The first four letters coincide with the first four those in Kharkiv] and the idea of a ” action manifesto” of the unit’s members.
“We created our Charter, which we equip with everything necessary: equipment, machinery, vehicles, but also ideas, Serhii Zhadan said in an interview with the authors of the project.
According to the writer, since the first days of the Russian attack on Kharkiv, dozens of volunteer “armies” have appeared in the city. The whole city works for defense and victory over the enemy. Not only activists or Maidan activists rose up for Ukraine, but also employees of state structures, businessmen and even hipsters, the people who had tried to stand as far from politics as possible before the war.
“These are not dozens and hundreds, these are thousands of people! The whole city worked to protect itself. In the first weeks and months of the large-scale war, many people literally did not leave the subway and warehouses, and they needed food and water. Shops were closed. And the part of the city that had food began to feed the other part that did not have it, as well as the army that restrained the Russians. In addition, new divisions immediately began to form,” Serhii Zhadan said.
Serhii Zhadan emphasized that a lot of Kharkiv residents joined the volunteer units and the regular army, who would never have joined the anti-terrorist operation, because they did not consider that war to be theirs.
“They were for Ukraine, but they had not seen wars. And now the war has come to their home. And they got angry. Because they never did anything bad against the Russians and even spoke their language. And now they have suddenly become enemies for the Russians only because they are Ukrainians and live in Ukraine,” the writer said.
And Vsevolod Kozhemiako added that everyone, Ukrainians, Russians, and other nations, love freedom. But for Ukrainians, the desire for freedom is the highest desire. “This makes us very different from the Russians and will never allow us to be one nation,” the entrepreneur believes.
“No one expected such resistance from the Ukrainians to the “second army of the world. The Russians expected that here, in Kharkiv, they would be greeted with pies and flowers. When I talked to the Russian prisoners and with those of our military who were the first to meet the invaders, they said that the Russians did not expect at all that someone would open fire at them here. They thought they were going to march downtown and have a parade or something. They did not expect resistance at all! They did not think that this war would become a people’s war. And this is their very big mistake,” says Vsevolod Kozhemiako.
As earlier reported, there are protective equipment rental points for media workers in the Journalist Solidarity Centers of the NUJU in Kyiv, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi, Zaporizhzhia, and Dnipro. Ukrainian and foreign journalists can contact the Centers if they are going to work in hot spots. Rental is free. In addition to a certified bulletproof vest branded with the inscription PRESS, you can get a helmet, as well as a tactical first aid kit.
“The physical safety of journalists has always been our priority, and with the beginning of a full-scale war, this issue became more acute. Thanks to the support of our international partners, today we have a sufficient amount of protective equipment to satisfy the requests of colleagues who go to work in the combat zone,” says Sergiy Tomilenko, the President of the NUJU.
UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. It contributes to peace and security by promoting international cooperation in education, sciences, culture, communication and information. UNESCO promotes knowledge sharing and the free flow of ideas to accelerate mutual understanding. It is the coordinator of the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity , which aims to create a free and safe environment for journalists and media workers, thus strengthening peace, democracy and sustainable development worldwide. UNESCO is working closely with its partner organizations in Ukraine to provide support to journalists on the ground.
NUJU Information Service
