While Western governments continue to supply Ukraine with critical weaponry such as HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems and PATRIOT surface-to-air missile batteries, civil society activists in Ukraine are working to ensure that less sophisticated kit, from trench candles to surveillance drones, continue to reach the front lines in the necessary quantities, and that civilians displaced by the fighting remain well-fed and adequately sheltered.

Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksiy Reznikov said these volunteer activities have made a vital contribution to Ukraine’s overall war effort.

“On the 24th of February there were a lot of items lacking in the armed forces of Ukraine, and volunteers were the first to respond,” Reznikov said in response to a question from Newsweek at the Odesa Media Center on December 11.

“These are people from the business community who know how to quickly conclude contracts,” he explained. “The state is less flexible. As a minister, I cannot spend from the state budget unless there is a procurement order, but volunteers are able to see a need and to meet it immediately.”

Oleksandr Yakovenko, a shipping entrepreneur in Odesa, is one of those volunteers. When Russia’s full-scale invasion began on February 24, Yakovenko quickly transitioned from transporting grain to moving military supplies from the Polish border toward the front lines.

“For the first few months, I would get messages from guys in the armed forces that there was going to be a delivery, and we organized trucks to pick up,” Yakovenko told Newsweek. “The military didn’t have the logistical networks in place to move everything it was suddenly receiving, but civilian companies like ours were ready to get the job done free of charge.”

After the Ukrainian Armed Forces sorted out its shipping needs, Yakovenko transitioned to making bulletproof vests. Once the country’s Western partners started supplying sufficient quantities of body armor, he began working to import non-lethal aid, including unmanned aerial vehicles. In Yakovenko’s experience, it is this kind of civil society initiative which has made Ukraine’s self-defense possible — and its ultimate victory all but certain.

“This isn’t a war just between the armies, it’s a war between the entire societies,” Yakovenko said. “There is no civil society in Russia, and Russia’s leaders made the mistake of believing that this meant there was no civil society in Ukraine.”

“They were wrong,” he added, “and their military is losing on the battlefield as a result.”

It is not only Ukrainian entrepreneurs who are stepping up to support Ukraine in its moment of need. Thanks to the country’s recent history of openness and democratic development, Western businessmen have also proven willing and able to mobilize their professional networks in order to support Ukrainian civilians affected by the war.

After spending nearly two decades fostering start-up technology companies in Ukraine, French investor Jean-Christophe Bonis has taken up the cause of humanitarian aid. In the weeks after February 24, he set up a non-profit organization, Team4UA by HIT, which helped evacuate over 100,000 Ukrainian refugees before transitioning to the provision of food and medical aid for those who remained in their homes.

“On February 24th, my first thought was ‘how to evacuate,’” Bonis told Newsweek, “but my second thought was, ‘how can I help?’”

“Almost immediately, I had a lot of people calling me from all over the world, and I understood that we could help connect Ukrainians who wanted to leave the country with people in Europe who were prepared to help them get settled,” Bonis continued. “Then, on the other side, it was necessary to sort and distribute all of the humanitarian aid that was coming into the country. We got to work on that aspect too.”

While Bonis has partnered with international organizations including the World Food Programme and UNHCR, it is his extensive experience living, working, and building relationships in Ukraine that allows Team4UA to deliver humanitarian aid in the most efficient ways possible.

“Everything I did investing here for two decades, it helped build up the network I’m using now,” he said. “It’s the horizontal connections in Ukrainian society that allowed the country to come together so quickly and coordinate a society-wide response, and it’s Ukraine’s integration into the Western world which has allowed it to attract and to utilize so much assistance from abroad.”

“I lived in St. Petersburg for some time,” Bonis added. “There is nothing similar between Ukrainian and Russian people on the level of the soul. Ukraine is different. The people here are different. And that is why Ukraine will win.”

It is not only big businesses mobilizing in support of the national defense. All across Ukraine, millions of people, from artists to teachers, are doing what they can to support the troops fighting on the front lines.

“Ukraine is like an anthill,” Ivan Drachenko, co-founder of the boutique fashion label The Sewing Brothers, told Newsweek. “When the war started, for everyone who went to the front, there were ten people doing whatever they could to make sure that our guys doing the fighting had everything they needed.”

Before February 24, Drachenko and his team designed, cut, and stitched their collection in a basement workshop located below their small store in Kyiv’s hip Podil neighborhood. After years of sewing tailor-made tracksuits for an international clientele that includes the American comedian Tom Segura, the early weeks of the war saw them continue their operations, even as air raid sirens blared outside.

“We made the decision that we weren’t going to leave,” Drachenko explained. “Some of our workers evacuated, but there were more than enough people looking to help that we continued to work.”

Instead of turning out the usual collection of consumer fashions, however, Drachenko and his team went to work producing ammunition satchels.

“Everyone had friends who were fighting, and the military was only beginning to discover how many needs it had,” Drachenko said. “Friends told us that they needed a certain type of bag with certain characteristics, and so we got to work making those. We ended up producing around 5,000.”

As the military’s supply situation stabilized, Drachenko and his team returned to meeting the demand for regular orders.

“Before the war, we would guarantee delivery to the U.S. in three days, but because everything needs to be sent across the border to Poland by land, that’s now eight days,” he explained.

Still, even as Drachenko’s business has returned to something approaching usual, he and his team continue to stitch apparel for the country’s armed forces.

“With winter approaching, guys have been asking for help keeping warm, and so we’ve started donating camouflage fleece hoodies,” he said. “The more guys on the front see them, the more requests we get.”

Also in Kyiv, photographer Andrew Kravchenko has used his archive of war photography in order to raise money for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Kravchenko began documenting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014. By filtering his collection through a GameBoy device, he created a distinct style of art that has generated enough sales to help procure pick-up trucks, night vision goggles, unmanned aerial vehicles, and other forms of non-lethal aid for Ukrainian troops.

“The pixelated look is reminiscent of the Ukrainian national dress — vyshyvanka — as well as of the uniform of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and the reduction to black-and-white serves as a reminder that, in war, all emotions are extremely polarized,” Kravchenko told Newsweek.

Unusually, however, thanks to the war, Kravchenko sees little sign of polarization in Ukrainian society.

“Every school child in this country knows that it’s a short road up to Bankova Street, where the presidential office is located,” he said. “If we don’t like what the government is doing, we know how to make our voices heard, and we have.”

“When our freedom is under threat from the outside, though, we’ve proven that we can come together to protect those rights,” Kravchenko added. “When the war is over, we’ll go back to arguing amongst ourselves about absolutely everything, as it should be in a democracy, but until the threat to our freedom is defeated, everyone understands the importance of coming together to fight until the very end.”

Ukrainian volunteer efforts are not confined to the capital. All across the country, help centers provide food and medical services for those displaced from their homes in active war zones, and everyday citizens contribute what they can to the defense of their state. Olena Yaschuk, the vice-director of a school in the Odesa region and a military veteran herself, is one of the countless number of Ukrainians still fighting behind the front lines.

“When the full-scale invasion started, I took my children to stay with their grandparents,” Yaschuk told Newsweek. “By the time I got back to the school a few days later, our collective was already doing whatever it could to help the armed forces.”

With in-person classes canceled, the school’s kitchen was converted into a production facility for energy bars and other easily transportable snacks. Hallways were filled with bags of multi-colored cloth, which was used to decorate hundreds of meters of camouflage netting. Around 50 of the school’s “kikimora” tree costumes have made their way to Ukrainian special forces units. Since returning to school in September, students have helped to produce around 1500 “trench candles” — aluminum cans stuffed with cardboard strips covered in melted wax — which burn for up to five hours.

Yaschuk’s volunteer work began in 2014, after Russian forces seized Crimea and began attempting similar operations in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

“I came under shelling while delivering aid in the east way back then,” she said, “but when I returned home and tried to tell people that Russia would eventually come here as well, they looked at me like I was crazy.”

February 24, however, left Ukrainians no room for doubt about the Kremlin’s intentions regarding their future.

“This time, the war touched everyone in Ukraine,” Yaschuk said. “Now we’re all fighting.”