More than 700,000 Ukrainians raised $7.56 million overnight for RAM II UAV kamikaze drones
After a series of missile strikes on Ukrainian cities, the Serhiy Pritula Charitable Foundation, as well as blogger Igor Lachenkov and activist Sergey Sternenko, announced a fundraising campaign for drones. A day after the start of the campaign Ukrainians transferred to them more than ₴270 million.
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Fundraising began on October 10 at 12:00 p.m. (EET). Within minutes the first million hryvnia ($27,000) was raised. By 13:00 (EDT) or 10:00 (PDT) Ukrainians had transferred a total of over ₴206 million ($5.6 million). At the same time, hackers launched a DDoS attack on Monobank. According to the bank's co-founder Oleg Gorokhovsky, the load on Monobank was 6 million packets per minute, and the traffic was 11 Gbit/min, which is dozens of times higher than normal.
Needless to say, the collection rate dropped closer to the night. Nevertheless, over 700,000 Ukrainians contributed ₴278.5 million ($7.56 million) overnight. Serhiy Pritula raised ₴202.6 million ($5.5 million), Igor Lachenkov - ₴19.3 million ($520 000), and Serhiy Sternenko - ₴56.6 million ($1.54 million).
Now the Armed Forces of Ukraine will receive kamikaze drones RAM II UAVs made in Ukraine. They are built on the basis of Leleka drones. The maximum flight range is 60 km, and the cruising speed reaches 70 km/h. The suicide drone can be equipped with a warhead with a fragmentation, shaped charge or thermobaric charge weighing 3 kg. The video above shows the RAM II UAV destroying a Russian Osa surface-to-air missile system.