“Thanks to the people’s satellite our military managed to destroy thousands of military targets, including the Rostov-on-Don submarine and the Minsk large landing ship to name a few. It paid itself off dozens of times,” Serhiy Prytula, a Ukrainian TV presenter and actor whose foundation helped raise the money for the satellite, told POLITICO.

It all began in the early days of the Russian invasion when Ukrainians were scrambling to buy weapons to fend off the onslaught.

The Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation and Ukrainian blogger Ihor Lachenkov crowd-funded some $20 million to buy three Bayraktar drones — which were a hot property in the first months of the war. However, Turkish manufacturer Baykar Defense decided to gift the drones to Ukraine instead.

With the money unspent, the volunteers consulted the military about the best use for the cash. In August 2022, they decided to buy one satellite as well as access to the database of Finish satellite company ICEYE created by the 21 satellites the firm owned at that time.

“I don’t remember any case when civil society bought a satellite for defense intelligence of its country. And Ukrainians are the ones who did it. People felt their power to do such big projects for their defense forces,” Prytula said.

Ukraine did not have its own satellites before 2022, so access to ICEYE technology allowed Kyiv to receive exclusive images under any weather conditions, despite rain, snow, fog, smog and dust, day and night.