Chernihiv, Ukraine – In combat, the speed at which your assault gun’s magazine loads is a matter of life and death.
Sometimes a soldier has to load cartridges in subzero temperatures with wet or injured hands. An incorrectly loaded magazine could jam the rifle and result in the death of its owner.
A simple and inexpensive accessory – quick-loading magazines, known to gun enthusiasts as “magloaders” or “thumb savers” – presses down on the top of the magazine so that cartridges are inserted with little or no pressure.
The fast chargers were widely used in the United States but virtually unknown in Ukraine until Take Back Our History, a volunteer group in the northern city of Chernihiv, began manufacturing them for free and supplying them to the military.
“You could save a life,” Bohdan Sereda, a 36-year-old engineer who volunteers with the group, told Al Jazeera.
“I loaded a magazine with it in 30 seconds without any training,” he said, standing next to a humming 3D printer and a plastic bag containing 100 finished loaders ready to be sent to the front lines.
To achieve this speed, inexperienced soldiers need days or even weeks.
Armed with a rapid loader, one soldier can load enough cartridges for three other soldiers to fire continuously at the enemy.
The assembly line is spartan and fits on an office table.
A 3D printer quietly transforms filament, a thick black plastic thread, into one of three parts of a speed loader, which are then assembled by hand.
“The soldiers say: ‘Give us more of this,’” Sereda’s colleague Oleksandr Antybysh, 35, also a trained engineer, told Al Jazeera.
The group is part of a larger volunteer movement that includes tens of thousands of Ukrainians and provides the front lines with almost everything needed during a war.
Schoolchildren make trench candles from cans, cardboard and wax and weave camouflage nets to cover trenches, artillery and armored vehicles.
Volunteer groups are turning civilian drones into deadly flying machines that rain explosives on Russian troops or even fire attached firearms.
The groups raise money and purchase and deliver night goggles, medical equipment and first aid kits, shoes, batteries and heaters.
They evacuate elderly people, children and pets from frontline cities or help rebuild homes damaged by shelling or during the Russian occupation.
“It took them three days to find insulin and bring it to me,” said Mikhail, a 67-year-old diabetic from the village of Yahidne, south of Chernihiv, which was occupied by Russian forces in March 2022.
One of more than 300 villagers forcibly herded into a school basement, he nearly died of insulin shock after nearly four weeks in the damp, rancid and suffocating darkness next to women, children and the bodies of his dead neighbors.
Another group of volunteers helped plaster the bullet-riddled walls, bricks and roof of his house, which stands next to the forest where Russian armored vehicles dueled Ukrainian forces.
Depending on frontline needs, volunteers sometimes move on to other, more demanding tasks along the way.
Army SOS, a group that supplied body armor and paper maps, eventually developed software for tablets or smartphones that allows soldiers to capture and transmit coordinates for precise artillery or drone strikes.
The speed of volunteers often cannot be matched by government agencies, which are bogged down in bureaucracy and occasionally accused of corruption.
“Volunteers are filling the deficit in logistics and, to some extent, assembly capacity,” Kiev-based analyst Aleksey Kushch told Al Jazeera.
Authorities said they would create “The Street of Masters,” a digital platform to select and support the most promising innovations through volunteer groups, but so far it is not online, he said.
“It seems like volunteers are covering the lion’s share of the need, and that’s easier to get [help from them] than getting it from government agencies,” Kateryna Klimenko, a lawyer who worked with volunteer groups, told Al Jazeera.
However, cases of fraud rarely occur.
Occasionally, commanders of military units receive drones from a government agency – and find a fake “volunteer” group that collects money to “buy” them and shares the profits with the commanders, an army veteran stationed in the eastern Donetsk region told Al Jazeera continues to condition of anonymity.
And as the West cuts off military aid for months and Ukroboronprom, a state-owned arms manufacturer, undergoes a painful transition, volunteer groups are multiplying and evolving.
“Ukroboronprom cannot deal with such small things as speedloaders,” Antybysh said. “We are filling the niche that Ukroboronprom cannot fill.”
“Take Back Our History” began with just one 3D printer at a time when the large-scale invasion was changing all aspects of life in Chernihiv.
The city lies near the border with Russia and its ally Belarus, allowing Russian forces to use its territory to invade northern Ukraine.
In the first days of the war, Russian armored vehicles were shot down as they attempted to enter Chernihiv.
But Russian troops soon nearly surrounded the city and began relentless shelling, hitting residential areas and killing hundreds of civilians.
The bombing also destroyed or damaged dozens of historic buildings in the 11-century-old city.
The Russians lifted the siege and withdrew from northern Ukraine by April 2022, but continued shelling.
On April 17, a rocket attack in downtown Chernihiv killed 18 civilians and injured dozens.
Today, the group has enough resources and volunteers to produce 100 speedloaders per week.
In addition to increasing production, they have other, bigger plans.
The group has already started 3D printing frames for drones and is working on adapting war veterans to civilian life.
After losing a leg, some veterans don’t like how their prosthetic legs – usually titanium rods – look under their clothing.
The group uses a scanner to create the image of the remaining leg, digitally reverse it, and 3D print a cosmetic cover that mimics the shape of the lost limb.
You can even add an image, such as a replica of a tattoo that was lost with the limb.
“It’s better socialization for a veteran,” Antybysh said.
The group, which also raises funds for a rehabilitation center for veterans, feels capable of making anything.
“Send us resources and equipment – and we will build tanks!” Antybysh explained.