War in Ukraine and ArmStreet February 25, 2022 September, 28 All gave some. Some gave all. Maks was one of a very few friends from the “ArmStreet and friends” group, a person who was there with us at the beginning of role-play and sword-fighting in Ukraine, the one who drove back from his job outside of Ukraine in the first days of invasion and had been fighting since those days. He was an ultimately good person. Always in a good mood, always there for you. We are so sorry, man... August, 24 Happy Independence Day! Our hearts are with our extended family members who serve and fight today, protecting others, and our job is to help with what we can and how we can, and keep our forge hot to be able to do this and for those who will return one day soon! August, 22 Back to stretchers! Our individual field stretchers became one of the standards in the recent war in Ukraine, they were designed in collaboration with several field medics and are now recommended by many instructors. The demand has lower for the recent several months, we managed to make what we need ourselves, but now it would be great to get some help! I want to be a part of it March, 31 Sleeping bags and stretchers, delivered. February, 16 That's a story about the random act of help and kindness and this makes it even more valuable! William Lloyd from the Lloyd Studios made this auction for the great knife he made without telling us a word and then sent us money asking us to forward them in the right direction. It happened right at the moment when we needed to invest some money into the new batch of sleeping bags requested and had a request for the medevac on hold for a month struggling to make it in time. Here we are and thank you, thank you, William, your van is on the mission today saving lives. October, 26 Somewhere in field hospital... Ukrainian field medics get a new batch of stretchers, thank you for making it possible! September, 8 So, winter is coming so the new requests for our sleeping bags are coming to us too. We essentially improved our first model, and we already made 96 bags on our own, but we need more... August, 14 Pennsic L connection! Thanks to our Pennsic friends, visitors and clients we got $2025 that will be used to buy stuff for the people fighting on the frontlines in Ukraine! Additionally, we need to make around a 100 more sleeping bags, that will be on us! July, 13 When you see familiar faced getting their stretchers from you... June, 30 Our stretchers project is up and running – not as fast as we want but it does work. May, 8 Four of our guys serve in the same unit, came back from Bakhmut closer to home, with a very minor damage! Your hammers are waiting for you. February, 24 – a year of war Our new project in collaboration with Ukrainian field medics to supply as much lightweight stretchers to the red zone evacuation units on the fronline. The project is on, we've been testing this for a while and the feedbacks are great, and they need way more from us! I want to be a part of it February, 15 We are proud to say we are finishing our “blankets” program as at the moment the refugee oriented structure is set up in Ukraine to the level that the demand on such a basic products as blankets is fulfitted, and we are going to keep sleeping bags for a month or two as we are still getting some request from newly formed units and friends who serve. Together we delivered over 1451 blankets and 721 sleeping bags, and the last 20 blankets were converted into sleeping bags due to the change in demand. We are now working on the next important life-saving product which you hopefully could help us to make. January, 1 2022 was rough but also full of hope! We did a lot – first thing first, we saved a company and all the people, though six of us are risking their lives every day serving in the Arming Forces, and many others take risks staying close to the frontline and delivering goods to the frontlines. We made a thousand sleeping bags and blankets using your help, and we also bought and delivered 7 vehicles to serve as medivacs using profits from the branded products sales... We not even managed to keep most of the workplaces but also made a couple of new designs this year and hope to announce a massive line of new products in 2023. We wouldn't make it without you, our clients, so the whole year was about the ultimate importance of people, both inside and outside the company, and we promise to keep this attitude for the years to come. Stay strong, and support Ukraine! Slava Ukraini! December, 6 Today is Volunteers Day in Ukraine, and we have a story for you. Many years ago, it was an awesome feeling to see the world you invented with your friends in your kitchen as a corporate seal and a trademark. Also, many years ago, we had our first photo session with twins modeling! Now one of those twins is a head field medic in one of the most prominent brigades, and it is an honor to have our logo on one of the medievaks that save the lives of Ukrainian warriors... November, 23 One more beautiful vehicle that will help sappers to clean up freshly liberated lands around Kharkiv will proudly have a Tygershark emblem on it. “Tygershark” is the name of our Pennsic War group, and it is hard to overestimate the amount of help we and Ukraine got from our beloved SCA team, and this beautiful vehicle is one of those things! October, 6 As the war goes on, we are happy to see the essential progress our military has achieved, and our birth town Kharkiv is way safer now, but it is also winter knocking on our doors, so we keep making sleeping bags and gathering money for two vehicles. We are also not only producing our regular stuff but as you can see, working on new projects so you hopefully see some new products soon... September, 8 The life of many Armstreetians didn't become normal one iota, but among the struggles of wartime and hardships of unwilling relocations we are still looking for opportunities to reunite for at least a short time and do our thing! Our beautiful twin models who have found a shelter in Germany, our photographer who was able to take these photos while waiting for the vehicle he should deliver to Ukraine, and the beautiful city of Haarlem and the North Sea August, 29 Winter is coming for Ukraine and ArmStreet! War is getting out new normal and we are working our socks off to stop this from happening. What do we do so far? Since February, 24 along with our job responsibilities and emergency actions to keep ArmStreet afloat (and we did it, but that's a different story), 5 of us joined Ukrainian Armed Forces to fight on the frontline and a lot more are doing all things possible to help those who serve. So, what we did: Blankets and sleeping bags (produces with your help) 2000+ Medivac vehicles and pickups: 4 (2 in partnership, 2 fully financed by our own and ArmStreet money), 2 in work Delivered vehicles and humanitarian convoys: 20+ (mostly by two of our active driver volunteers with a little help from our friends) Other stuff: medical supplies, military headphones, drones, mag pouches, and mags — financed by your T-shirt purchases and our own money. People and animals evacuated, trucks loaded and unloaded, people relocated and all this — just goes without saying and became a part of our everyday life. What we are working on now: A medivac van for the 2nd stage evacuation (yellow zone) for one of our friends — the head of the field medicine for one of the frontline unit. We have $3060 gathered at Pennsic, we need 4K more and we will do it anyway, but you can help too: Donate for medivac! 300 or better more sleeping bags — winter is coming and we expect it to be harsh. Sleeping bags for warriors! August, 24 Today Ukraine is celebrating its 31st birthday! Next year we hope to see some of you in person to celebrate, mourn and rebuild! Happy Independence Day, Ukraine, a country of indomitable people! August, 11 Black T-shirt “Tapestry of War” with linen print It's hard to explain what it's like now in Ukraine, the war is still here and you never know what's next. At the moment we stabilized our manufacture processes and can sell most of our products. At the same time it's already five of us were enlisted and we still do what we can to support them and our military personnel overall. Every time you're buying one of our T-shirts you also support Ukrainian troops. This T-shirt is somewhat special, we wanted to make a black one and also decided to add some medieval flavour. So, it is as close to tapestry as a T-shirt could be, with a print on a piece of linen sewed to it. July, 11 Our “Tapestry of War” T-shirt is now available in olive green! Please scroll down to read how your branded products purchases help ArmStreet to make it through the war and help our military. July, 5 Thanks to our friends, business partners, and clients, we bought, delivered to Ukraine, fixed, painted, and delivered to the hottest locations on the East front three vehicles. Two vehicles went to the unit where two of our guys serve, and one to the old friend in reconnaissance delivered as close as 20 km to the front line. One of them will play a noble role of a medivac, and the other two will be humble personnel vehicles. This also happened thanks to you, so you should know that every branded product you buy makes a little input into this huge effort, so there is your share in this amazing, life-saving endeavor. You can be a part of it, buying our special products. June, 30 “A warrior and a serpent” t-shirt in olive green is here and available in all sizes. June, 9 Our footwear shop is back on track again! We are turning preorders on today and custom-size footwear in a week or so, depending on the orders flow! May, 24 We can see the end of our backorders list and we hope to be able to make custom clothing orders in a couple of weeks… fingers crossed. May, 17 “A warrior and a serpent” t-shirt for our Old Norse fans to support Ukraine. May, 15 There is still a need for our sleeping bags and blankets. When we are getting the extremely good news that russians can’t harass and bomb our city of Kharkiv, there is still a need for these bags, both military and humanitarian. These particular bags make our central hospital a little bit happier. Many people in Kharkiv became homeless because of russian bombings, and some of them are in hospitals with little to nothing stuff. May, 3 “Tapestry of War” T-shirt is available in a new color! Thank you for your support! May, 1 Our stock is up and running, and we are happy to announce that our fixed-size footwear is available for the international shipping again. April, 26 Ok, now our stock of pre-made fixed size products is ready to work and you're welcome to order in-stock clothing again April, 23 We've always been adepts of fair trade, providing the best costumes and armour we can make for money, but one of the things that war does - it changes your priorities. We are doing our best to make it through the war as a company. We see that many people are just willing to help, so we appreciate and humbly accept your help. Support ArmStreet I was asked yesterday by a friend from the US, do we see Western help and is it significant. The answer is yes, we see it everywhere and we couldn't survive and win without it, there should be no doubt. April, 19 It is the first month of the War in Ukraine, put on the T-shirt by our talented designers. Some may recognize the XI century Bayeux Tapestry style. April, 14 Good news — we take armour orders again! April, 13 Today we just want to say thank you to you all. Ukraine is getting a lot of help. Canada and United States were our allies since the beginning of the Russian invasion in 2014, training our troops and providing a lot of military aid and intel. I have a friend who came from Canada to help! We got a lot of support from the United Kingdom, and British NLAWs compete with American Jawelins crushing russian tanks. Welcome to Kyiv, Boris! Turkey, we love your Bayraktars. Poland is doing an amazing job, and it seems that every citizen in Poland doing something for Ukraine. Thank you, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania! Slovakia, thank you, you know why! We are thankful to every country in Europe, for hosting our wives, kids, and parents. It's hard to overestimate how important it is, to have our loved ones safe. We are thankful to you, our amazing customers, from all over the world! Our mutual hobbies and interests have created some special bonds, and those go far beyond the company-client relationship, but the scale of support we got is amazing. I don't know how to put it properly, but we will remember this till the end of our days. That's probably the first time in my life I'm saying something like this. April, 9 This T-shirt is printed in Ukraine, due to many factors it is harder and a little bit more pricey to make stuff in Ukraine, but this allows us to help other struggling Ukrainian businesses, from the printing company to the postal service, let alone it helps us to make a living during these horrible times. On the picture: Maria is a successful Ukrainian model, you saw her modeling for many of our products. The photos are taken in Lviv, where Maria is helping her mom, a seamstress, to make gear for military service dogs. April, 5 Our invincible team is working on ArmStreet armour backorders list. April, 3 We switched to making durable sleeping bags for the military. No words today after seeing photos from Irpin and Bucha. March, 31 More blankets have been shipped and delivered, mostly to the Kharkiv region, and we are getting some feedback from the front lines which will lead to making a more suitable product for military use. March, 28 Our fixed-size products stock in the West of Ukraine is almost operational and we are making some test deliveries to make sure we can actually send products from here. If it doesn't work, we will find a way to ship most of it to the US stock. March, 25 One more positive sign — postal services in Ukraine do work, it obviously takes longer than usually but our blankets have reached even the most distant cities in the East. We also have some good news for our clients — we moved our stock to the safe location in the West and will be able to ship our “fixed size” stuff in a week. March, 20 Some good news, and it took some time to make sure everything worked in accordance with the plan. We moved our stock to the west of Ukraine and now looking for space to be able to restock and organize everything, but it's just a technical question and hopefully, everything will be solved. We also organized both supply chain and manufacturing processes to produce and deliver those blankets you actively helped us to produce, and we already delivered or loaded for delivery more than 200 items to the refugee hub in Svetlovodsk and to the emergency hospital in Kharkiv and have donations from you, guys, to make well more. We are also working on patterns for the field sleeping bag to make it next. March, 16 A lot of things have happened!Thanks to heroic efforts of our guys we are now moving part of our inventory to the safer places, and we hope that some equipment will follow!We also set up blanket sales which allows you to buy and us to make them and send them to different locations on demand. We already sent 50 blankets to the refugee hub in Svetlovodsk and sent another 20 to one of the territorial defense units in Kharkiv. More to come! March, 14 Not a lot of news today - we are working on resetting financial services within Ukraine and getting ready to start moving some of our stuff to Western Ukraine. It's really hard to act under such unpredictable circumstances, but it's definitely better to do something than doing nothing. March, 12 Ukrainians are making the impossible. Today russia used all their forces and desperately searching for more reserves when 30 out of 90 russian batallion groups are inoperable or totally destroyed. For us, it just means doing what we do - moving people from Kharkiv to Western Ukraine and organizing supply to start making at least something on our manufacture in Lviv March, 10 I'll try to describe the recent situation for those who want to understand the actual situation better. I can't give any first-hand information on what goes on in the South, as ArmStreet main units are located in Kharkiv and Lviv and we are mostly spread in between these two cities at the moment. North-East. Kharkiv. It seems like half of the population of this beautiful city has actually moved elsewhere, and I personally witness a shock and trauma caused by ten days of being under constant bombing. On the bright side, it seems that Russians are exhausted and running out of supplies so now bombings are random and completely militarily senseless. The awful thing is that there are a lot of lonely, sick, old people who have no resources and energy to relocate. Both government-runed and volunteer humanitarian aid and heroic efforts of the city authorities made the city not unliveable - roads are cleaned where possible, most households have electricity, heat and gas, but some haven't and the consequences might be desastrous. People are leaving the city but there are plenty of our folks who are staying in Kharkiv and here is why. West. There are more than two million people left their homes and half of them moved to the EU and the other half stays in the West. West is overcrowded. Lviv is known as one of the most popular tourist locations in Ukraine, with roughly one million people visiting this city a year, Since the beginning of the war, it's almost the same number went through the city in two weeks and about 400 thousand people stay. A lot of government and private institutions opened their doors, reorganizing offices, sport facilities, and campuses into temporary living spaces, but again, when it works perfectly for fully functional people, having a sick or old person or a baby under your care creates a huge problem which is very hard to solve. In-between. People keep evacuating, our train system works like hell creating more and more routes, but again, it's a huge challenge for many categories of people.Normally, a drive from Kharkiv to Lviv takes 10-12 hours, now it takes 3 times longer, and you have to find a temporary place somewhere when the curfew starts. Some of our folks made this ride several times, and it's really challenging and unpredictable. On the bright side, Ukrainian army burns enemies like hell, and all people of Ukraine help each other when and where possible! United we stand! March, 08 Four or five or more days of driving for three of us making rides to Kharkiv, Ukraine from our little hub 150 km from it. Delivering some medicine and very needed gas, relocating ArmStreetians and family members to safer places from Kharkiv, Ukraine.We can't produce and deliver our usual stuff at the moment due to postal services closure and supply chains interruptions, but a night spent in the hub in Central Ukraine for people fleeing war gave me the idea of what stuff we can make for people suffering on their way to the West. March, 06 Every day brings new challenges and new hopes. These three days were very challenging for those of us who made rides to Kharkiv to relocate colleagues and family members. The situation is still very uncertain with Russian troops attacking peaceful cities and infrastructure that tries to hold enormous pressure of war. ArmStreet is slowly drifting westward but these days everything is very slow with endless caravans of people fleeing war. Thank you for your help, and care, and a huge thank you to our friends from neighboring counties for taking care of our children and women. March, 03 The situation is deteriorating on the ground in Kharkiv, with systematic GRAD and airplane bombings and heroic city services attempting to keep electric, hydro, and heating systems intact. Several more ArmStreet families successfully left Kharkiv. Those of us who already have families safe go back to help people and deliver essentials. March, 01 Heavy rocket strike in Kharkiv today - several people dead and many injured after a long-range rocket hit one of the main administrative buildings. ArmStreet employese and families are safe, today several families moved successfully from Kharkiv and they are our of the active war zone. We are reorganizing one of our workshops to start producing defensive metal constructions. Please note that any orders you're placing won't be manufactured in the near future. If you need a refund please contact our support. How you can help? If you buy a gift certificate on ArmStreet, these money will be used to help those of us who are now hiding from bobmings and to keep ArmStreet family aloft. Stay strong! February, 28 After the heavy bombing in Kharkiv 11 civilians are dead and many more injured ArmStreet is keeping contact with those who left in the Eastern Ukraine, and we are organizing evacuation to those who want to leave. No progress on any major direction for the enemy and a lot of convoys destroyed by Ukrainian Military Forces! February, 25 Dear All, As many of you know, ArmStreet is a Ukrainian company, employing dozens of people in Kharkiv and Lviv and across our country. Please understand that we are not currently taking new orders on our website for a limited time because the main priority at the moment is the safety and wellbeing of our staff. Our city is under attack but Ukraine is strong and resilient, and we are holding ground well, as well as we are moving people and material good to the West If you’re wondering what you can do to help, we encourage those currently waiting for items to give us patience - do not cancel your order. Lend us some time to find safety for our families so that we can begin to think about creating beautiful items for you again. Love and peace, ArmStreet
