Angels (patronage service)

Angels Patronage Service

Патронатна служба “Янголи”
Type	Patronage service, nonprofit
Official language	Ukrainian
Owner	Olena Tolkachova
Commander	Olena Tolkachova
Key people	Andriy Biletsky, Olena Tolkachova
Website	azovangels.com

Angels Patronage Service is a Ukrainian patronage service that provides assistance to the military. The Angels Patronage Service take care of wounded, captured and fallen soldiers of the 3rd Assault Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Azov Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine. The patronage service includes representatives of medical services, civil-military cooperation services and logistics units, as well as volunteers and veterans.

The responsibilities of the service include: medical support for wounded soldiers; organisation of rehabilitation in rehabilitation centres in Ukraine; psychological support and emotional support for soldiers; support for prosthetics for soldiers with traumatic amputations; organisation of funeral ceremonies for fallen soldiers; legal and social support for soldiers and their families.

The service also participates in the identification of fallen soldiers and facilitates the fastest possible identification of the bodies of the fallen, organises the storage of the bodies of unidentified soldiers. It provides legal, social and financial support to the families of servicemen and veterans.

According to the organisation's vision, the Angels Patronage Service seeks to change the requirements and protocols for the treatment and physical and psychological rehabilitation of military personnel in Ukraine, to form a veteran cult in Ukrainian society, a decent veteran policy and to reform the culture of the farewell ceremony for soldiers.

History

In May 2014, after the Revolution of Dignity and the formation of the Russian-backed Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic, the Azov volunteer battalion was established. The founder and commander of the battalion, Andriy Biletsky, instructed his subordinate Olena Tolkacheva to create a service that would provide medical, social and legal support for the wounded, bury the dead and support the families of the soldiers. At the initial stage, all organisational issues were handled "naturally", with Tolkacheva performing all functions on her own, and later four other sisters joined her. Over time, the service was replenished with new employees. The purpose of the service was to cover the needs of the military that the Ministry of Social Policy, the Ministry of Veterans Affairs, the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine could not meet at the time.

In the winter of 2024, the head of the Patronage Service, Olena Tolkachova, and her team set up a working group with the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Ministry of Defence and began to develop an algorithm for launching "patronage services" in each brigade of the Ukrainian Defence Forces. The model was based on the Azov Angels Patronage Service.

Since 1 October 2024, all combat units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have had regular patronage services to support servicemen and their families, as announced at a press conference by Oleksandr Kutkov, Head of the Central Department of Civil-Military Cooperation of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

On 14 September, after the exchange of prisoners with Russia, the commander of the 12th Brigade, Denys 'Redis' Prokopenko, announced on Facebook that a new structure, Azov.Support, was starting to operate within the 12th Brigade, which would be part of the brigade's medical service. Following this announcement, the Patronage Service reported that the information about the creation of a new service that effectively duplicates their work came as a shock and put the wounded Azov soldiers and their families in a state of chaos. In particular, this situation has arisen due to the lack of an official announcement from the command of the 12th Brigade and the lack of communication regarding the wounded soldiers. However, the work of the patronage service was not affected by the creation of the new Azov.Support structure; wounded soldiers of the 12th Azov Special Forces Brigade, veterans and families of the military remained under the care of the Angels.

Symbolism

The symbol of the Angels Patronage Service from 2022 to 2024

In October 2024, after the name change and rebranding of the service, the military units received a new chevron and the Patronage Service Charitable Foundation a new symbol. Three lines symbolise the wing of an angel and the National Idea sign.

Until October 2024, the symbol of the Patronage Service was an angel, which with its wings guarded the symbol of the Azov movement National Idea, a monogram combining the letters "I" and "N".

Structure

The commander of the patronage service is a Ukrainian Armed Forces servicewoman and volunteer, Captain Olena Tolkachova, call sign "Gayka".

The service consists of the following units:

Department for work with the wounded

The department, headed by Dzvenyslava Sira, is the largest, with more than 10 people working here. The service's medical supervisors take care of wounded soldiers from the moment they are injured or return from captivity. The department provides full support for the soldier:

• supervises treatment and rehabilitation until full recovery;

• provides psychological assistance and develops new protocols for the treatment and provision of psychological assistance to veterans, and is engaged in training military psychologists and psychiatrists;

• oversees the resolution of issues with documents.

In the process of treatment, the curators provide the wounded with the necessary medicines and basic necessities. In the case of support for soldiers who have lost limbs, the curator communicates with prosthetists and rehabilitation centres, etc.

The department also provides support and supervises the collection of medical documents for the VLC and MSEC.

Department for work with prisoners, missing persons and their families

The department, headed by Olha Kravchenko, oversees the following areas of work:

• assistance to soldiers who have returned from captivity — employees are working to help restore documents, organise legal advice for soldiers after exchanges, interview soldiers, and collect information about those who are in the non-government controlled area;

• assistance to military personnel in captivity;

support for the families of prisoners of war, communication and consultations, including legal and procedural ones;

• support in the search for missing soldiers and support for their families;

• cooperation with the structures responsible for exchanges, information monitoring and search for missing persons: the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Security Service of Ukraine, the Ministry of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories, the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, etc;

• work to identify the bodies of the dead.

Department of work with the fallen and their families

The purpose of the department, headed by Bohdan Kulakov, is to provide support to the family of the deceased. This includes:

• receiving bodies at the point of evacuation from the battlefield;

initial examination and identification;

• preparation of documents for transferring the body to the morgue, preparation of death notices;

• preservation of personal belongings of the deceased soldiers;

• assistance with legal issues;

search for qualified lawyers;

• assistance in connecting relatives with responsible officers of the unit and establishing communication between them;

• communication with the Territorial Centres for Recruitment and Social Support, pre-trial investigation authorities and a number of other services involved;

• controlling and organising the transport of the body from the evacuation point to the place of burial and its identification — the Service maintains its own database of tattoos and special signs of soldiers.

Since 2014, the Service has had its own well-established protocol for the ceremony of farewell to the fallen. The department performs all the tasks necessary for the burial of the deceased Azov soldier and family support. In addition, due to the lack of samples of proper coffins for ceremonial burials, Angels Patronage Service, together with a private furniture company, created special coffins for the fallen soldiers.

Department of work with families

The service is guided by the principle "An Azov family is a strong community where everyone is important". The department, headed by Iryna Mashovets, takes care of the families of the Azov people:

• provides legal, financial, and psychological support to the families of servicemen, veterans, and fallen brigade members;

• organises programmes for the physical and intellectual development of children to help families realise the potential of the future generation of Ukrainians;

• working on the installation of memorial plaques, renaming of streets and other actions that honour the memory of the defenders.

Projects are being organised from scratch to support the quality of life of the Azovs in the future: in particular, the Patronage Service has covered all the costs of freezing and storing the genetic material of the soldiers and their partners for possible future IVF, starting the programme before the relevant draft law was presented to the Verkhovna Rada.

Logistics department

The department is headed by Volodymyr Dovhopolyi. The logistics department is responsible for everything related to freight and transport, including:

• transporting the wounded, bodies of fallen soldiers and relatives of military personnel;

• finding ways to deliver the wounded soldier to the medical facility where he is being treated;

• search for the necessary medicines;

• documentation.

Many of the department's employees are former fighters of the original battalion, and later the Azov Brigade, who were injured or traumatised, incompatible with further military duty.

Media department

The service has its own creative team headed by Karina Petrash. The department is responsible for:

• managing its social media (Telegram, Instagram, Facebook);

• communication with the media;

• collaborations with Ukrainian brands;

• organisation of filming;

• ensuring participation in various cultural, educational and scientific events.

Activities during the Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022)

Further information: Russian invasion of Ukraine

Further information: Siege of Mariupol

In 2022, after the start of Russian invasion of Ukraine, Olena Tolkacheva registered the Angels of Azov charity foundation, and in 2023, the Azov Patronage Service NGO. The number of permanent employees of the service is approximately 50 people. As of December 2023, since the beginning of the invasion on 24 February 2022, five thousand soldiers have used the services of the Patronage Service.

From June 2022 to February 2023, employees of the Azov Patronage Service took part in the identification and examination of the repatriated bodies of fallen Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel, including those who took part in the Battle of Mariupol. At that time, about 30 soldiers of the 12th Brigade of the Azov National Guard were identified out of 600 soldiers, while the rest of the dead belonged to different units.

Participation in the construction of the National Military Memorial Cemetery

The Patronage Service initiated a project to create a Memorial to the Heroes of the Azov Regiment, the defenders of Mariupol, on the Spivoche Pole in Kyiv. Over time, this project evolved into the idea of building a National Military Memorial Cemetery for all fallen Ukrainian soldiers.

The Service oversaw the development and changes to the project and agreed on its details with the Ministry of Veterans Affairs. At the moment, when the project is at the stage of beginning construction, the Service continues to communicate with the authorities and residents of the settlement where the memorial is to be built.

Fundraising of the foundation

As a charitable foundation, Angels depends on donations from patrons and citizens. To raise funds, the foundation uses a variety of activities — from opening local collections for a specific need (for example, prosthetics for a particular soldier) to organising charity events.

The largest such event so far has been the Friends of Angels Evening, where business representatives, patrons, partners, military personnel and other guests had the opportunity to contribute to the foundation's activities through a charity auction. The event is planned to be held annually, with the first and so far only one taking place in May 2024. The fundraiser raised over UAH 20 million for three areas of the foundation's activities:

• The Warriors' Health Fund provides treatment, rehabilitation and prosthetics for wounded soldiers;

• Angels of Education is education of children of fallen and captured soldiers;

• Institutional support is support for the Angels office.

A total of 11 lots were presented, one of which - an embroidered shirt worn by Dzvenyslava Sira, Head of the Department for Work with Wounded — was sold for $75,000.