Whilst volunteering in Ukraine, I met a fellow volunteer from Italy. He’s spent time bringing supplies into the country, and doing some more grass-works distribution work in the east of the country. Generally it sounds like he’s doing great work. When he walked into the room his backpack caught my eye because of the number of chevrons.
I asked if I could grab a picture, and he told me a bit about them. At the top left we’ve got an emblem which he says represents his home country of Italy. In the top right we have the flag of the Donetsk Oblast where he’s spent time distributing supplies. Below that is a more civilian chevron which translates as “The Lord protects and gives victory”.
Moving to the bottom section, the chevron in the top left bears the name and emblem of the small city where he spends a lot of time and will be headed out to soon (redacted here for privacy). In top right we have the emblem of the ДКВС/DKVS, the Ukrainian penitentiary system. He mentioned that he was given this by a soldier, and that it was very meaningful to him. In the bottom left we have the chevron of the 80th Air Assault Brigade (garrisoned in Lviv), and the bottom right is one associated with Kyiv- I’m not sure which unit.
Interestingly these are largely chevrons in the green tones commonly used for chevrons designed to be worn at the front. He did mention that he was headed out for “training” soon, which could mean a range of things.
He also had some more tourist-y chevrons on his jacket. On the right we’ve got “Freehugs” in the design of the Pornhub logo. Below that we have a common волонтер (volunteer) chevron.
On the left we have a gamer-joke, implying that you are about to enter a dangerous area. Below that is a recreation of the sign one would find upon entering the Donestk Oblast. Signs (or steles) like this are commonly seen around Ukraine when driving into a different Oblast.
The Donetsk stele in particular is a culturally important one in Ukraine. Soldiers headed into the region commonly stopped off to sign their names on it. After unknown persons decided to “renovate” the sign by painting over the signatures, Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself visited to contribute his own signature to the reclamation of it.
