You're reading: Knocked out of combat, veteran opens business

MARIUPOL, Ukraine — The group of young friends is in a rush to finish their work in two days.

In a tiny room from a shopping mall in downtown Mariupol, they hastily paint walls, wash shop windows, install a bar for serving drinks and put up a white neon sign reading: “Veterano Coffee.”

This barely noticeable venue with its small serving hatch will soon be a new coffee-to-go place. There are plenty of them in this port city of 500,000 people located 630 kilometers southeast of Kyiv.

But this one is special and local television is there to cover the opening.

“The war taught me a good lesson,” a pale young man said in response to an interview question in front of a TV camera filming opening-day preparations. “No one owes you anything — you are on your own and your life is in your hands. So instead of waiting for the sun to shine, I got a grip of myself and set up my own business.”

This is Oleksiy Kachko, the owner, and this the second coffeehouse he has opened in Mariupol.

Known by his nickname Celt, the 23-year-old combat veteran of Russia’s war in the Donbas whose serious health problems knocked him out of combat duty, is now making a name for himself in business.

He has come a long way to entrepreneur from his days as a soccer hooligan, then to volunteer soldier and now disabled soldier with part of his lung removed.

But above all, he wants to give new hope to thousands of other soldiers and officers who, like him, returned home damaged and scarred by war.

Ultras at war

In late 2013, when the EuroMaidan Revolution started that would drive President Viktor Yanukovych out of power on Feb. 22, 2014, Kachko was only 19 years old.

He was a technical college student, but was also a member of the “ultras” — a group of soccer hooligans — who followed the main soccer club in Mariupol, Illichivets, named after the Illych steel plant in the city.

The ultras gangs of the various soccer clubs around the country had been bitter rivals. But this changed when the infamous riot police, the now-disbanded Berkut, brutally dispersed a crowd of student protesters on Maidan Nezalezhnosti square in Kyiv overnight into Nov. 30, 2014, triggering nationwide disgust.

“After that, the fans of Dynamo Kyiv issued a call to all of the ultras in the country: Let’s have a truce and go against the Berkut,” Kachko said. “We all had our own bones to pick with the Berkut — for all the beating we had suffered from them after matches.”

Together with many other radical fans, Kachko went to Kyiv to participate in clashes at the Maidan.

But even more brutal violence followed when a Russian-backed insurgency in eastern Ukraine swept into Mariupol in the spring of 2014. Along with many other fellow ultras, Kachko fought Russian-led forces on his city’s streets.

Local clashes in the Donbas soon escalated into a full-fledged war, but despite having lots of friends in volunteer battalions, Kachko didn’t join them.

But on Aug. 21, 2014, a close friend of his, an Azov Battalion fighter called Oleh Aksenenko, was killed during the battle of Ilovaisk. Mourning his friend, Kachko joined the Azov Battalion, part of Ukraine’s National Guards, and was given his nom-de-guerre — Celt.

One of Celt’s most memorable moments in uniform was a day in 2016 when “some American politician” visited his boot camp.

The mysterious visitor, a robust, silver-haired old man, walked among the fighters, shaking their hands, looking in their eyes, and exchanging encouraging words with some of them. He wished them to be good soldiers of their country.

It was the late U.S.  Senator John McCain, who died on Aug. 25, 2018, and who took a strong stance in support of Ukraine against Russia’s war.

“I didn’t know who he was then,” Kachko said. “But later in the day, I poked around Wikipedia, and I was immensely impressed: the Vietnam War, torture in captivity, serious disability, and then a glorious political career. That was a life story I wanted to learn from.”

How his service ended

Serving in the Azov Battalion were two of the happiest years of his life, Kachko said.

But towards the second half of 2016, he fell ill and his health rapidly deteriorated. Soon he was unable to continue his duties. He had pulmonary emphysema — the result of days and nights in the cold wind, rain, and frost at the war front. A large part of an affected lung had to be removed.

That was the end of his military service. In late 2016, Kachko was discharged with a third-grade disability and life-long medical ban on manual labor. He was only 21.

Back home in Mariupol, he had to get by on a monthly pension of Hr 5,000 ($180) — hardly enough to live on — and bleak prospects of employment due to his disability.
The Azov Battalion came to his aid, with disability compensation of Hr 120,000 ($4,300). So he used the money to start a business.

“I served in a volunteer force,” Kachko said. “And this teaches you to be proudly self-reliant and independent. So when I came back home and realized that no one needed me, I thought: ‘Screw that, I’m not going to beg for social benefits. I’m launching my own cool business.’”

So in early 2017, he opened his first small coffee-to-go shop.

“Brewing coffee is a very easy service to provide,” he adds. “Any fool can do that. And you can run a simple coffee place without investing big money. It’s a good business to start with for a retired veteran: most of us are not wealthy at all.”

As an ex-serviceman, he joined the Veterano Group, a nationwide pizza and coffee chain established in Kyiv by Leonid Ostaltsev, also a retired combat veteran. After buying a franchise, Kachko started running his first coffee place under the famous army-friendly brand — and it immediately attracted thousands of loyal clients in Mariupol.

A Veterano Coffee employee brews coffee for a client in downtown Mariupol on Oct. 11.
Photo by Volodymyr Petrov
Oleksiy Kachko, 23-year-old war veteran turned businessman serves drinks in his new coffe-to-go house in Mariupol on Oct. 11.
Photo by Volodymyr Petrov
Young couple hugs each other outside a Veterano Coffee shop in central Mariupol on Oct. 11, 2018.
Photo by Volodymyr Petrov

Serving pizzas

With Veterano Coffee unexpectedly profitable, Kachko soon started looking for a place to open a second spot. He teamed up with Bohdan Chaban, also a former volunteer fighter and a celebrated 25-year-old businessman known for running the popular Izba-Chytalnya bar in Mariupol.

Chaban urged Kachko to try making what the Veterano Group was primarily famous for: pizza.

So in early 2018, they jointly rented a tiny kitchen and opened Mariupol’s first Veterano Pizza delivery service. Thanks to the buzz the two generated on Facebook, the business was an instant success.

“Prior to launch, we were only hoping to sell up to 50 pizzas a day, just enough to cover our expenses at least,” Kachko said. “But from the very first day sales hit the mark of over 90 a day. ”Now we deliver approximately 120 pizzas a day, and even plan to open another kitchen on the city’s left bank.”

The entrepreneurs soon launched another exclusive feature that went viral on Facebook: the option to buy a pizza for Ukrainian soldiers.

Customers make a donation on a website, and soon pizza is delivered right to the trenches just 20 kilometers away from the center of Mariupol.

Kachko and his partners make three or four trips to the war zone each month, and the number of donated pizzas delivered to soldiers can reach a dozen at a time.

New hope

But the veteran-friendly business mainly aims to support those whose days in uniform are over.

“After the war, it is not easy for a soldier to get back to civilian life, to find a regular job,” Kachko said.

“Their values and mindsets change forever. They got used to another life at war, they have a very burning sense of what is right and wrong.”
Many former soldiers fail to readjust, and instead turn to crime.

“You can see a tendency — you hear news about armed robberies, or attempted murders, and they turn out to involve a former soldier. Just because he failed to get a decent job, and someone paid him to commit a crime. And for him, killing is not a problem.”

After falling into a life of crime, or drug and alcohol abuse, between 500 and 1,000 Ukrainian veterans have committed suicide since 2014, according to various estimates, due to post-combatant syndrome, but also due to unemployment.

So Veterano in Mariupol offered to hire demobilized soldiers — to give them hope and a new start in life, instead of leaving them alone to face their demons. Several ex-soldiers did come to work, but mostly just to get a temporary job and earn some quick money, or to learn how to make pizzas.

Many more, inspired by Celt’s story of success, came for his advice.

“Over this year I’ve helped 148 guys from the military,” Kachko says. “They usually come and ask: ‘I want to open a business too, tell me how to do it.’ So I tell them how to get registered, what to start with, and how to avoid issues with municipal services and taxes.”

Some did return to their hometowns and opened new small businesses, starting from scratch. Thousands of retired soldiers may have rebuilt their lives this way, Kachko said.

Pizza chefs prepare dough at the Pizza Veterano kitchen in Mariupol on Oct. 10, 2018.
Photo by Volodymyr Petrov
Ukraininian military serivcemen order pizza at the Pizza Veterano cookery in downtown Mariupol on Oct. 12, 2018.
Photo by Volodymyr Petrov
Young married couple feeds their child with pizza as they sit in an outdoor canteen near the Pizza Veterano cookery on Oct. 11.
Photo by Volodymyr Petrov
A pizza maker washes a disk knife in a Pizza Veterano cookery in downtown Mariupol on Oct. 11, 2018.
Photo by Volodymyr Petrov
Veterano Pizza cooks prepare carton delivery boxes in a cookery in downtown Mariupol on Oct. 11.
Photo by Volodymyr Petrov

Change for the better

The Veterano chain in Mariupol is growing quickly, but it has taken a toll on Kachko’s health: on launching the pizza delivery business, he worked in the kitchen himself to ensure the pizzas were being made properly. He fell sick and ended up spending two months in hospital.

But the example of McCain keeps him going: following McCain’s lead, Kachko has decided to become a local politician in Mariupol. He has entered university to study political science. By an ironic twist of fate, the pizza business he co-owns is located next door to his alma mater.

“You know, with a (disability) like mine, people don’t live long,” he said. “So I hope to take my time and do as much as I can to change the life in my city for the better.”

“I’m a veteran myself, so I dream to see positive things in our country being associated with war-hardened people. I want to break the image of veterans as an annoying burden, constantly demanding more privileges and benefits, who are reluctant to work, or who suffer from post-combatant syndrome.”

“I think people want to buy our pizza because it’s really tasty. But what is most important to us is that by enjoying our services, society is starting to change its attitude to veterans, for the better.”