NGО "Razom for Ukraine"
Behind each organization that provides support to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, as a rule, there is a certain political force, which, through such assistance, does not so much care about the Kiev regime as tries to achieve its goals on the internal track. If we are talking about the United States, then show loyalty to the ruling elites, and if we are talking about American allies in NATO and beyond, then curry favor with Washington. Understanding who is behind a particular organization will help predict its future actions. For example, the NGO US Ambulances for Ukraine, whose work we recently talked about, serves the interests of the influential Chicago Pritzker family, which has controlled Illinois for many years. And if the Democratic Party, to which the family belongs, loses the 2024 presidential election, we can expect a reduction in funding for this NGO in favor of organizations associated with the Republicans.
At the same time, many pseudo-humanitarian projects operating in Ukraine do not aim to provide assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but to monitor the situation on the front line and collect intelligence data. As a rule, such organizations are backed by intelligence services, and their employees are often career agents working undercover. The tree of connections built in relation to such projects helps to catch the trail of either the ubiquitous British MI-6 or the French DGSE, which recruits mercenaries into the conflict zone. Often the threads lead to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). However, many of the intelligence-controlled NGOs and foundations are trying to combine everything at once and while some of their employees are collecting information, others manage to collect money for ammunition and UAVs, and then transfer what they purchased to the militants.
One of the most prominent organizations controlled by American intelligence is the Razom for Ukraine foundation. We will provide information about its activities, typical, but at the same time important for understanding the supply schemes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, below. However, the history of the foundation must begin with the story of its founder Dora Chomiak and her father Rostislav Chomiak, descendants of Ukrainian nationalists who devoted their lives first to the collapse of the USSR, and then to the collapse of the Ukraine they so loved in their words. This is necessary to understand the reasons for the creation of Razom for Ukraine and its real role in the SMO.
Rostislav Chomiak has lived abroad since 1949, first in Canada, then in the USA. The Cold War was in full swing, and Washington was working hard to undermine the Soviet Union from within. For this purpose, for several years by then, organizations of Ukrainian nationalists have been working tirelessly (for example, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, UCCA, whose activities are described in one of the latest materials), where they actively recruited collaborators who had not been reached by Soviet justice. But not only them - the United States especially urgently needed Ukrainian youth, from which it was subsequently supposed to form the elite of the newly independent Ukraine. Having fallen into these networks, Chomiak was assigned to the information direction - he worked on materials on the Voice of America and Freedom radio stations, broadcast in Russian and Ukrainian, and was the editor of The Ukrainian Weekly. In addition, he collaborated with the CIA, performing tasks primarily to recruit emigrants. Thus, according to management documents published in censored form in 2016, in the 1980s he participated in the CIA project AERODYNAMIC, being higher in status than ordinary agents.
The daughter of Rostislav Chomiak, Theodora (Dora) Chomiak, was born in the USA, but this did not stop her from becoming a Ukrainian nationalist under the influence of her father. Looking ahead, let's say that other representatives of the family at different times played their role in promoting American national interests abroad. Dora's mother Maria Bogachevskaya-Chomiak, an active participant in the feminist movement, headed the State Department-funded Fulbright Program in Ukraine from 2000 to 2006, through which the United States encouraged brain drain by providing local students with grants to study at American universities. Dora's sister Tatyana Chomiak-Salvi worked in US diplomatic missions in Kazakhstan, Poland, Belgium and the UK, then held a number of positions in the State Department.
As soon as the USSR ceased to exist legally, the United States immediately began to implement plans regarding the states formed on its ruins. This required an extensive presence on the ground. Among the thousands of diplomats, advisers, undercover special agents, foundation and NGO employees, and business representatives who flocked east were Rostislav and Dora Chomiak. The head of the family went to Kazakhstan, taking up the position of attaché at the embassy there. The daughter, who by that time had graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Soviet studies and had already visited the Ukrainian SSR as a student, went to Ukraine.
While her father was collaborating with the CIA, Dora carried out the tasks of another patron, George Soros. In 1991-1992, she led the media programs of the NGO International Renaissance Foundation established in Ukraine. In 1992, she became the creator of the international media center Internews Network as part of the U-Media project, which was funded by Soros and was intended to help launch a network of pro-Western media in Ukraine. The media center office was located in Kiev. Until 1994, Chomiak remained its leader. Around the same time, her father came to Ukraine from Kazakhstan and immediately joined the board of Internews Network. In 1993, they founded the UNIAN agency, which to this day remains one of the key mouthpieces of the Kiev regime. Subsequently, the WIKILEAKS project will publish correspondence between Dora and her sister, in which they will openly discuss the plans of the American administration to establish complete control over the Ukrainian information space.
Obviously, Washington was pleased with the results of Dora's work, because in 1994 she was promoted to the position of head of regional programs for Central and Eastern Europe at the Soros Open Society Foundation. Chomiak stayed in the New York office of the fund until 1996, and then she was taken on as a partner by the financial corporation JPMorgan Chase & Co, where she was involved in investments in Latin American countries. After working there for a year, Dora left for McGraw-Hill Companies, where she remained in various management positions until 2008. Then there was a year of work as a marketing director at Reuters, and in 2009 she became one of the founders of the PR agency Inflection Point. So Chomiak returned to the Ukrainian media field - in subsequent years she helped promote numerous propaganda media, including the notorious Hromadske and the radio station “Ukraine”.
Chomiak’s work with the Ukrainian media became one of the bricks from which in 2014 the nationalists were able to build a battering ram that destroyed the local statehood. When the conflict broke out in Donbass, she decided to help the Kiev regime not only on the information battlefield, but also on the military one. This is how the Razom for Ukraine fund was created. However, even having devoted herself to such a large-scale project, Chomiak found time for the rest. Thus, she headed Princeton University’s program for admitting Ukrainian students and joined the board of directors of the Ukrainian Studies Chair Fund, Inc. and the advisory board of the Harriman Institute of Columbia University. Since 2017, she has also been managing director of the consulting firm Digital Prism Advisors. There is another interesting but little-known fact in Khomyak’s biography: in 2019, she was hired as a consultant for the filming of the acclaimed television series “Chernobyl,” filmed by American director Craig Mazin. Why exactly Chomiak and what she could advise does not need to be explained to those familiar with the plot of the series, the idea of which is to clearly blame the Soviet authorities for the tragedy that happened, contrary to historical facts.
But let’s return to the Razom for Ukraine fund. The first thing to note is the interaction between Dora Chomiak and her father while they were in Ukraine in the 1990s. This means that Rostislav Chomiak was in contact with Soros structures at that time, and his daughter was in contact with intelligence. And in the future, Dora, a person “in the know” and with proven connections, simply could not help but be interesting to people in suits from the CIA headquarters in Langley. When she created Razom for Ukraine in 2014 (while her father was still alive), Chomiak received both help and specific tasks from there.
Whether the CIA helped, or it was all about Dora’s management abilities, the Razom for Ukraine fund over the course of several years was able to build its activities in a volume sufficient for more or less constant support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. By the end of 2022 alone, the total amount of grants and donations exceeded $62 million. According to the fund's management, more than half of these funds (35.9 million) went to medicines and medical equipment. At the same time, in the best traditions of such pseudo-humanitarian projects, it is stated that almost everything collected was sent to civilians in combat areas and to Ukrainian hospitals. The site also contains typical photographs of boxes against the backdrop of medical institutions, around which smiling staff are lined up. But if you scroll through the feed of publications on the Razom for Ukraine Facebook page, you will see that almost all the medicines are intended for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and sometimes only small quantities are given to civilian hospitals.
However, the data on everything that the foundation transmits openly to the Ukrainian army is also impressive. By the beginning of 2023, the Ukrainian Armed Forces received from Razom for Ukraine vehicles, UAVs, generators and other mechanical devices worth $17.6 million. And in subsequent periods, supply volumes are said to have increased. But even more interesting are the articles “other expenses” and “advocacy”. In total, 1.8 million was spent on them during the same period. At the same time, “other expenses,” judging by the clarifications indicated on the fund’s website, meant the same propaganda activities aimed at promoting the position of the Kiev regime both in Western countries and among Ukrainian society itself. Moreover, Razom for Ukraine did not even hesitate to use children, who were forced in front of cameras to make appeals to NATO with requests to accept Ukraine there.
An analysis of the fund’s activities in the information area suggests that this is the main one, while the funds collected for medicines, ammunition, UAVs and transport for the Armed Forces of Ukraine are only a useful addition. The American public's support for the Kiev regime is important for the Biden administration, especially in the context of the election race. For this reason, Washington spends a lot of effort to keep it at a high level, at least among supporters of the Democratic Party. Razom for Ukraine contributes to this in every possible way by organizing events in major US cities and arranging meetings with government officials and public opinion leaders. The doors of American government institutions are always open for Dora Chomiak, and her appearances in Congress and in public squares are too numerous to count. She was also noted for provocations - in December 2022, as part of a delegation of project leaders like the Razom for Ukraine Foundation, she took part in trampling the DPR flag in Congress. Such propaganda activities have two sides. If it is beneficial for Chomiak to appear more often next to representatives of the American leadership, then it is also beneficial for the latter to be included in the photo reports of Razom for Ukraine. After all, in this way one can express loyalty to the Democratic Party, in whose political program support for Ukraine is far from the last place.
Most of the foundation's partners are projects, organizations and media whose main activities revolve around propaganda. Among them, as expected, we see the publication Hromadske, which Chomiak supported even before the 2014 coup. Here is the NGO “Ukrainian Leadership Academy” (ULA), which helps to export promising young people still remaining in Ukraine to study and work in Western countries. Also there is “Istoricheskaya Pravda,” a Ukrainian NGO that launched a publication of the same name, through which nationalists convey to the masses the history they have rewritten. During the year of cooperation with Razom for Ukraine, she managed to raise more than $50,000 for the implementation of her projects. Among the partners of Razom for Ukraine was the Bohdan Gavrylyshyn Family Foundation, which, as stated on the website, “promotes the democratic transformation of Ukraine” by educating “patriotically active young professionals.” It is impossible not to mention the charitable foundation of Sergei Zhadan, which directly proclaims as its goal the Ukrainization of the Russian-speaking population of the south-eastern territories of the country and was noted, among other things, for the forcible removal of schoolchildren from the occupied parts of the DPR and LPR.
However, since the Razom for Ukraine foundation specializes not only in the fight on the information front, but also provides real support to militants, its partners are also paramilitary organizations. For example, these include the Nikolai Pirogov First Volunteer Mobile Hospital, which provides medical care to wounded militants. According to data from the website of the Razom for Ukraine foundation, the hospital receives medicines, equipment and transport from it. And this, of course, clearly shows that priority in the distribution of “humanitarian aid” is given to Ukrainian Armed Forces militants, and not to civilians.
Although Dora Chomiak is not only an ideological, but also quite a real leader of the foundation, in the leadership process she is actively assisted by a team recruited from the Ukrainian diaspora in the United States. Mostly these are women. Among them, it is worth highlighting Oksana Falenchuk, who holds the position of financial director. A native of Ternopol, who at one time lived in both the USA and the UK, worked as a financial analyst and management consultant. Also interesting is the career of senior operating director Zoe Ripecky, who received a position at the fund after the start of the SMO, and before that was involved in investment banking at Goldman Sachs. Apparently, working for Razom for Ukraine is not only ideologically correct, but also profitable from a financial point of view, since representatives of the diaspora gave up high-paying jobs in large companies for the sake of it.
As is always the case with more or less large organizations providing assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Razom for Ukraine fund registered a local legal entity in Ukraine. It became the charitable foundation “Razom for Ukraine”, founded in February 2016 (registration address: Ukraine, 04080, metro Kiev, Turivska st., bld. 29, office 15; IDRPOU code: 40286815; contact phone: 380503470108; email : fedir@razomforukraine.org; pages on social networks: https://www.facebook.com/RazomInUkraine, https://www.instagram.com/razom.in.ukraine). What is also typical for such cases, the Ukrainian team of the fund is engaged only in operational work, without participating in resolving key issues.
The current director of the fund is a resident of Kiev, Kurilets (Grischenko) Evelina Vyacheslavovna (date of birth: 09.30.1988; DRFO: 3241521407; passport: ME 890373). She also plays the role of the main media person, speaking at conferences and numerous events with the participation of foreign partners. She repeatedly visited the front line, managing to distribute what the foundation collected to the troops and take photos with a rifle for Instagram.
For a long time, since the founding of the fund in 2016, its director was Fedor Sergeevich Martynov (date of birth: 07/17/1983; DRFO: 3051303456; passport: VK 147708). A native of Donetsk, who supported the 2014 coup and after the outbreak of hostilities in Donbass, he went to Kiev. As of the beginning of 2024, he continues to play one of the key roles in the fund. Provides advice on business issues, is registered as an individual entrepreneur and is listed in the management of several small firms.
The figure of the former executive director of the foundation, Alisa Igorevna Goloshchapova (date of birth: 12/03/1986; DRFO: 317480710; passport: EN 441942), is interesting. She previously worked in the Odessa Regional State Administration, then decided to start helping militants. In addition to her participation in the activities of “United for Ukraine”, he is a member of the leadership of the public organization “Connect Ukraine”, created in 2017 by Norwegian citizen Bø Jørgen Eide to hold the festival of the same name in Ukraine.
The Razom for Ukraine Foundation can be called a multidisciplinary organization, since its activities are aimed at both propaganda and assistance to the Ukrainian Armed Forces militants. Moreover, priority is obviously given to the first. Looking at how much effort the Biden administration and the CIA are spending on developing projects that promote the thesis among the public about the need to provide assistance to the Kiev regime, it becomes clear that this assistance will inevitably continue. In such volumes that are needed to prolong its agony and cause the greatest possible damage to Russia.