You're reading: Meet the woman campaigning for Ukrainian army in Defense Ministry

“Disaster.”

That’s the word that comes to Tetyana Rychkova’s mind when she thinks of her first day as a defense ministry employee.

“I literally
didn’t know what to do,” the 37-year-old Dnipropetrovsk native explained with a
smile during an interview with the Kyiv Post. She was one of several volunteers
who a year ago joined
the ministry’s Reforms Office,
tasked by President Petro Poroshenko with improving the military’s
organization.

The primary tasks
the office was charged with included overseeing the transition from the
army’s antiquated logistical system to a more efficient model, managing new warehouses
and providing soldiers with NATO-standard military uniforms. Rychkova
previously worked as a volunteer running supplies to the Ukrainian military on
the front lines in the Donbas.

Now, a year later,
Rychkova, who also has served an advisor to Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak,
says she’s proud of the office’s achievements.

“We can now say
that 100 percent of Ukraine’s soldiers have uniforms.”
Starting this
year, each soldier will be provided with summer and winter uniforms, including
helmets, bulletproof vests, goggles and socks. “They will have everything,”
Rychkova said. “Hopefully, we’ll secure the financing to fulfill the orders.”

Tetyana Rychkova

Tetyana Rychkova walks to her office at the defense ministry in Kyiv. Photo Kostyantyn Chernichkin

Bureaucracy still hampers the Reform Office’s work, as many decisions taken by the ministry still require legislative support from parliament.

But the recent
launch of a transparent state procurement system is another positive step
forward, Rychkova said. The ProZorro electronic public procurement system
helped save at least Hr 1 million during the first reverse auction held to buy
rations for soldiers.

And the food
supplies themselves have been drastically improved, Rychkova added, because of
a pilot nutrition project for the soldiers.

Pavlo Kaiuk, the
member of the Reforms Office responsible for the project, said that the
ministry has shifted from using outsourcing companies to provide rations to
direct procurements based on the needs of the soldiers.

A rations audit
helped to identify the number of products each soldier needs, and this also
encourages responsible consumption, Kaiuk says. In addition, a card system was
implemented so that it became easier to monitor the process of supplying
rations to the army.

Cadets of the Lviv
Academy of Land Forces and Odessa Military Academy, together with selected
military units, have already benefited from the system.

“Meals are
prepared on the spot by civilians,” Kaiuk explained. “The cooks can choose from
300 products on the list to diversify the menu. We tried to think of the
soldiers as VIP clients.”

Kaiuk also said
that one unit saved Hr 700,000 on rations alone. “The money saved will be used
to buy new equipment and renovate canteens,” he said.

Rychkova hopes
similar systems will be implemented in at least 10 military bases in 2016,
including units located in Ukraine’s east.

She says the
ministry now can track the delivery of uniforms and other necessary supplies
from the warehouses. “We need to keep eye on how they’re being used,” she said.
The system is now
being tested in the 79
th Airmobile
Brigade, located in Mykolaiv.

Tetyana Rychkova

Tetyana Rychkova, a volunteer and a defense ministry employee talks in her office in Kyiv on March 1. Photo Kostyantyn Chernichkin

Some on the
ministry’s staff were originally unhappy with the appearance of civilian
volunteers, as they thought only members of the armed forces could understand
the soldiers’ needs, Rychkova said.

For her part,
Rychkova gained firsthand knowledge of the army’s plight as an active volunteer
in the war zone, helping the 25
th Airborne Brigade.
Her husband, Vadym Rychkov, served alongside her as the unit’s communications
head.

After her husband
was killed in action in the Donbas in August 2014, Rychkova refused to leave
the front.

She confessed that
going to a war zone for her is much easier than working in the office, even
though her trips have become increasingly less frequent.

“My colleagues
laugh at me, saying that it feels like I’m going on vacation there. Every time
I come back from the east I’m even more enthusiastic and full of ideas about
what else needs to be done,” Rychkova explains.

Her to-do list for
the year includes working on a draft law concerning the military police, hiring
more military psychologists, and launching e-medicine services to improve the
quality of aid in the ministry’s medical establishments.

Her work leaves
her little free time to visit her mother and son in Dnipropetrovsk.

“Usually I visit
them once every two months or so. I went to Dnipropetrovsk on vacation once. I
arrived at 2 a.m. and later that morning got a call from the ministry,”
Rychkova recalls. “The next 18 days of my ‘vacation’ were spent working in
Kyiv.”

She said she hopes
her son will move to Kyiv in the future. “He wants to enroll at the Ivan Bohun
Military School (in Kyiv).
Then,
at least, I can see him on weekends.”

Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached
at
[email protected].