This fundraiser is about equipping a human remains detection dog that was trained entirely on a voluntary basis and is now also handled by volunteers. The teams search for fallen soldiers and killed civilians in frontline areas so that they can be given a dignified burial and their families can finally have clarity.
After the 2-year-old dog “Star” successfully completed her training and is now ready for deployment, she urgently needs a ballistic protective vest with stab protection and a helmet. At the moment, she is working without protection.
Why we are launching this fundraiser #
In the heavily contested and formerly occupied areas of Ukraine, volunteer teams search for fallen soldiers and killed civilians. They search former battlefields, destroyed towns and villages, fields, forests and terrain that is still partly under fire.
Behind every missing person is a family.
People wait. They hope for a phone call, a message, a prisoner exchange. At the same time, they have to live with the possibility that their loved one may already have died.
Work that is almost impossible to imagine #
Training the dogs alone is extremely demanding and time-consuming work that has to be planned and structured very carefully. It is not in a dog’s nature to happily follow the scent of human remains.
We will not even try to describe everything the volunteers experience during these missions. Finding people in all kinds of conditions is something you first have to be able to endure. And all of this happens in situations where the volunteers themselves face a very high risk of being shot. You can probably imagine the noise around them. The smell they encounter in those moments… probably not.
About Star #
Here you can see “Star”, a 2-year-old dog who is now ready for deployment.
Star is currently working without sufficient protection. That is not safe. Not at all. The risk that she may die young is already high. But she should not die from injuries that could have been prevented.
What does she need? #
She needs a protective vest: ballistic protection, SK 1 plus stab protection. And a helmet like this one. A real “bargain”… but if we put the nearly €700 into perspective against the life of the dog, the time and effort people have invested in working with her, and the impact and importance of these teams’ work for the relatives of those they find, the amount suddenly looks very different.
And these guys… they put their lives on the line to personally stand up against the Russian attack. The very least that can still be done for them is not to leave them to decompose somewhere in the bushes. Or to be eaten by stray and starving dogs. That happens too.
Olha’s call for help #
The request for help came to us from her: Olha. She is one of the animal rescuers who constantly evacuate animals from frontline areas. Many animals were left behind by people who fled or were forced to leave them behind. Some animals’ owners are simply already dead. And some animals had always been homeless.
The men and women working in these areas know each other. You can imagine that there are not many people willing to go there. Olha was friends with Aleksiej, the founder of the human remains search team. Aleksiej has since died as well. Olha wants to help the remaining team continue its work as effectively and for as long as possible. That is why she is looking for this protective equipment for Star.
What does Olha say in this video, roughly? — “We came here today to pick up an elderly man and his goat. No other volunteer organization wanted to come to this area. The man had three goats and a family. Now only one goat is still alive. For the others, it is already too late. His family is dead, and so are the other two goats. This goat is the most important and the only thing he has left.”
Help us make sure Star can continue doing her work for a long time. #
Please support us so that Star can continue doing her work for as long as possible. Every donation helps finance Star’s protective equipment and helps keep her safer while she works.
If we raise more money than is needed for the protective equipment, we will use the remaining funds to train additional human remains detection dogs.
Support us now
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Donate with PayPalBank transfer
- Recipient
- UA-DE e.V.
- IBAN
- DE40 3005 0110 1009 4097 21
- Bank
- Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf
- Reference
- STAR
For a donation receipt, please contact schatzmeister@ua-de.info – we will need your postal address. For amounts below €300 no receipt is required; we are happy to send one by email on request.
UA-DE e.V. is a recognised non-profit organisation – your donation is tax-deductible.
Fundraising progress
57%Donations booked to account 4210001
| Date | TxId | Payment method | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-22 | ...1441N |
PayPal | 203.40 EUR |
| 2026-09-21 | ...4050L |
PayPal | 51.12 EUR |
| Total | 254.52 EUR | ||