Somewhere at the back of a yard, past vehicles ranging from banged-up marshrutki to gleaming giant military trucks, down a lightless corridor that pongs of wee, up a staircase that is actually not disintegrating, down an echoing mostly disused factory corridor lined with closed doors lies… a very large pile of colourful fabric. And another one. And a kind of washing line hung with colourful strips And a cosy-ish kitchen corner. (And a toilet of doom, but that’s further down the corridor.)
Welcome to the Kubyk Volunteer Centre, masterwork of Serhei Bregeda, who set it up at the beginning of the war – that means not 2022, he is at pains to point out, but 2014.
Set Up
There are two basic elements to a camouflage net; the net itself and the fabric strips. Nets are simple, if not simple to obtain – these ones at least are manufactured in Kharkiv, and russia recently had a good go at destroying the city’s entire power supply. However, I’m advised by friends there that the blackouts are shortening in length so maybe this problem will ease.
The fabric – easy to obtain, as it’s sold in Dnipro – consists of three types: brown-ish purple (looks like tree branches), plain green (looks like foliage) and ‘pixel’, which is what we would normally think of as ‘camouflage’.
First it’s cut into strips:
Serhei there, wielding a power tool. Then the strips are strung on a kind of washing line for people to grab and use.
The third essential element of the process is the ‘kubyk’ which gives the centre its name: the frame on which the nets are hung while they are being woven. (There is also a ‘pyramid’ in another room.)
Weaving
The basic principle is clear: mix the three elements in a sufficiently chaotic fashion as to look like natural growth. This is both extremely simple and devilishly complex. I certainly did not master it in the course of four days, but I got a bit quicker. Rather than attempt an explanation, I will show you an expert, Lena, at work.
Once the nets are complete, they’re taken off the kubyk and spread out for examination.
Finally they are rolled up for dispatch to the front.
Kubyk started out in a children’s hospital and has had to move a couple of times due to arguments with the authorities – there’s an article here (in Ukrainian, but Google translate is pretty good at Ukrainian these days). Now, ‘we have a big place but not a lot of people’ Sergei says regretfully. I know foreign volunteers don’t make it down to Zaporizhzhia often, but I was surprised to find out that Rob, who was there in July 2022 and who told me about it, in the only other foreigner to have ever visited Kubyk! This is in sharp contrast to Lviv, where it’s practically an industry.
This is one example of a big problem in Ukraine: resources are weighted towards the west of the country, even though the east is worse affected by the war and generally poorer. There are obvious reasons for this – people and stuff can more easily get to the west. And as long as the camouflage nets make it to the front line, I suppose it doesn’t really matter where they are made. Still, the situation is indicative of a general imbalance. The fact that Kubyk is in a secret location and run by non-English-speakers is obviously an additional barrier, but I have promised to evangelise to other foreigners in the country and may already have lined one up for May.
Oh, I love this! There seems to be something philosophically relevant in the building of an image of living nature by imposing chaos on the well-ordered pattern of the net. Also, the *corners* of the kubyk: simple, 3D symmetrical, sturdy, allowing minimum requirements for dimensions of wooden elements. (Over here they're called "morali", but nothing to do with morals).