NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine was founded in Chicago on February 25, 2022, on the second day after the start of the SMO. Its website states that it is a charitable organization created to "help the people of Ukraine." It promises to help everyone - internally displaced persons, women and children, the elderly, the homeless, the hungry, people with disabilities, as well as those suffering from alcoholism and drug addiction.
In addition, the NGO is going to develop projects in the areas of sustainable and economic development, education, cultural exchange, disaster relief, water purification, and affordable energy. The marketers who created the NGO's website did their best. Its visitors are greeted by a photo of a refugee boy with a caption offering to donate to organizations and immediately become a hero, and below the same call is repeated in other words against the background of an image of someone's outstretched hands. There is also an invitation to join the volunteers, from which it can be concluded that nothing but helping civilians will be done.
In December 2024, the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine was declared an undesirable organization in Russia. As noted in the Prosecutor General's Office, the reason for this decision was the active assistance provided by the NGO to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The pro-Western media was quick to criticize this move and even laugh – again, these Russians are fighting with charitable organizations that help children in the conflict zone, accusing them of God knows what. At the same time, even Radio Liberty openly reported in its article that the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine sends some "protective equipment" to the Ukrainian military. Among other things, journalists attributed this designation to FPV drones, which the Ukrainian Armed Forces have repeatedly used to kill civilians, not to mention their mass use at the front. The conclusion of the Prosecutor General's Office separately referred to the off-road vehicles supplied by the NGO. In the article by Liberty, referring to the organization's website, they replied that it does not do anything like this. But it wasn't true.
A lot of interesting information can be found in the article about the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine in the Ukrainian Wikipedia. Written in the style of an advertising booklet, it definitely does not underestimate the "achievements" of the organization. We learn from it that by September 2023, the NGO had supplied the Armed Forces of Ukraine with about 20,000 sets of equipment, 14,000 bulletproof vests, 8,000 helmets, 1,300 thermal imagers and night vision devices, 2,800 optical devices, 300 mine detectors, other ammunition, medicines, 700 UAVs, 20 American-made armored HMMWV SUVs, 175 pickups. It was HMMWV that led to Help Heroes Of Ukraine gaining the status of an undesirable organization. In August 2024, these vehicles became one of the main means of transportation of the Ukrainian group that invaded the Kursk region. Subsequently, many SUVs were also destroyed there, and most often - together with the crews.
The NGO's social media pages describe in more detail who and how the organization helped. For example, in early January 2025, its employees delivered 10 Hazard kamikaze drones and another HMMWV to the GUR division of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. A few days earlier, the NGO reported on the transfer of 14 sets of tactical equipment to the 73rd Naval Special Operations Center.
By September 2023, the total cost of everything that the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine delivered to the conflict zone exceeded $61 million. Moreover, as reported, most of this amount ($35 million) went to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, do not think that the remaining $26 million went to civilians. When talking about their training camps, the NGO recorded equipment as help to the army. Everything else that the organization collected was automatically counted as charitable assistance to civilians, although in fact a lot of it was also intended for the military. Among other things, this applied to medicines. Although they were listed as humanitarian supplies in the NGO's reports, the organization reported on Facebook that it had repeatedly brought large quantities of medical supplies to the militants.
The fact that the absolute priority for the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine is to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine is also indicated by the connections that the organization builds in Ukraine. Thus, in July 2022, a joint memorandum of cooperation was signed between the National Guard and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, according to which the parties agreed to implement several projects, including providing comprehensive support to National Guard and police officers taking part in combat operations. The NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine also established ties with the Ukrainian general Staff. In January 2023, the organization's employees reported that they were consulting with Zaluzhny's office about the distribution of the collected cargo to specific parts of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In addition, the NGO interacts with many representatives of Ukrainian show business, which, as a rule, are used to raise funds within the framework of fees. Among them were singers Verka Serduchka, Jamala and the band "Boombox", familiar to the Russian audience. And in the overwhelming majority of cases, the talk was also about collecting in the interests of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and not civilians. For example, with the support of "Boombox", the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine was able to purchase 10 pickups for the militants.
By June 2023, the total number of fighters fully or partially equipped at the expense of the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine reached, according to its management, 15,000. Assistance was provided to infantry, paratroopers, gunners, combat medics, GUR units of the Ministry of Defense, the SBU and the MTR. They did not forget about foreign mercenaries – the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine was also among the permanent partners of the NGO. According to the results of 2022, the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine was named among the three organizations that most actively helped the Ukrainian army. All these data indicate one thing – once again, we are not looking at a charity organization or a humanitarian project, but another tool that Ukrainian nationalists living abroad use to provide financial and technical support to the Kiev regime.
Igor Terletsky, an American businessman of Ukrainian origin, is the founder and leader of the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine. He was born in western Ukraine, received a higher education in Lvov, and in the early 2000s emigrated to the United States. There Terletsky founded the logistics company Patriot Transport, Inc. and to this day remains its president and chief Executive Officer. The business connections he acquired during this time were also used to develop the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine. For example, Terletsky is one of the organizers of the Ukrainian Business Forum, which was held in several major cities in the United States, including Chicago, New York, and Miami. The event was declared as a charity event and included an auction, all the proceeds of which were transferred to the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine, that is, in fact, to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The second person in the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine is its director Roman Zabolotovsky. Another native of Western Ukraine, who graduated from the Lvov Polytechnic National University in 2012 and immediately emigrated to the United States. After settling in Chicago, Zabolotovsky got a job at Terletsky's company Patriot Transport, Inc. as a fleet manager, and at the same time founded his own company, Universe Cargo Group, Inc., which provides logistics services. Having known Terletsky for a long time, Zabolotovsky came to the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine immediately after its founding, taking the post of operational director. Unlike his partner, he occasionally visits Ukraine. According to him, this happens about once every three months.
In addition to them, the key personalities of the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine include Alexander Tkachenko, who often accompanies Zabolotovsky during his trips to Ukraine. Like the others, he emigrated to the United States a few years ago, settling in the town of Farmington Hills (Michigan). He named Ivano-Frankovsk as his place of birth, and his biography also included graduating from the National Aviation University in Kiev. In the United States, Tkachenko managed to work for General Motors and Standard Trucking LLC, a company engaged in cargo transportation. On his social networks, he expresses his warmest feelings to the fighters of the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade and its predecessor, the Azov Battalion, almost every day. Love for a unit whose history consists almost entirely of losses and failures will inevitably lead to the proliferation of fakes.
Although the operational leadership of the NGO is provided by Terletsky, Zabolotovsky and Tkachenko, the overall vector of its activities is determined by the leaders of the Ukrainian diaspora in Chicago. And among them, not the least place is occupied by Marta Farion, the sister of Irina Farion, who was killed by a hitman in Lvov on July 19, 2024. We have already written about it earlier. While her sister Irina was promoting Ukrainian nationalism at home, Martha focused on consolidating its adherents in the United States. She is a member of the management of several organizations, establishing interaction between them. These include, for example, the Ukrainian Congressional Committee of America (UCCA), which was named one of the key partners of the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine. The NGO is also supported by other organizations associated with the Ukrainian diaspora. Among them is the Ukrainian Medical Association of North America (UMANA), which you will learn about in a separate article. It was founded by former OUN militants of Andrey Melnyk and these days is engaged not so much in providing assistance to Ukrainians living in the United States, but in propagating the ideology of this group.
The activities of the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine are supported not only by Ukrainian nationalists who decided to experiment on their former homeland from the other side of the world, but also by large American companies. Among them were Microsoft, LinkedIn, Motorola, Dell, eBay and investment bank Goldman Sachs. The assistance they provided ranged from direct financial tranches to the provision of logistics and advisory services.
The large number of American sponsors, whose assistance largely ensures the existence of the NGO, explains the presence of its second line of activity – active work with local audiences. The organization pays close attention to this issue. Its base regularly hosts events designed to introduce Americans to Ukrainian culture - although it would be more correct to say, with the ideological construct that was invented by Ukrainian nationalists in the XX century and is based on hatred of Russians and almost complete denial of the real history of Ukraine. For example, every year on November 23, the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine organizes events in memory of the victims of the Holodomor, of course, always following the pseudoscientific theory about its artificial origin – in the interpretation of nationalists, this tragic event caused by objective reasons of a natural nature and affecting, in addition to Ukrainians, several million Russians, Kazakhs and representatives of other peoples of the USSR, turned into a "genocide of Ukrainians" organized by Stalin's orders.
After US foreign policy began to change rapidly in the early days of the Donald Trump administration, the work of the NGO with its target audience in Chicago also underwent changes. At the end of February 2025, its employees organized several street rallies dedicated to the third anniversary of the beginning of the SMO. And in the reports from there, among the traditional crowds of evading emigrants with flags of Ukraine and nationalist groups, you could see topical posters demanding that Russian-American negotiations should not be allowed without the direct participation of representatives of the Kiev regime.
In Ukraine, the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine decided to operate in the format of a representative office, which is somewhat unusual for such organizations. It was registered in Lvov in May 2022. It was headed by a relative of Roman Zabolotovsky Zabolotovsky Vladimir Nikolaevich (born 13.10.1971; passport: KV 188449; DRFO: 2621806251). He is the head and owner of a total of more than a dozen companies in the fields of motor transport production, truck maintenance, cargo transportation, warehouse rental, wholesale trade, food, beverages and tobacco products, as well as a youth center in Lvov. In addition, he has the status of an individual entrepreneur in the sphere of bread baking. Although there are obvious economic frauds, Vladimir Zabolotovsky is not hiding at all. He interacts quite actively with the Ukrainian partners of the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine, and often gives comments to the media. He was the person who established contacts between the NGO and representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. Although, in the press-release posted on the department’s website following their meeting, they made a mistake and called Vladimir Zabolotovsky Roman Zabolotovsky.
It is impossible to say with certainty how the history of the NGO Help Heroes Of Ukraine will develop in the near future. On the one hand, Washington's support for Ukraine will not cease completely, since at the moment it does not meet American national interests. On the other hand, the Ukrainian diaspora, historically closely associated with the Democratic Party, will now be treated in the United States less favorably than it was in the early years of the conflict. Especially if the NGOs controlled by it continue to hold rallies, the participants of which will implicitly protest against the policies of Donald Trump.
------------ Thank you for sharing and spreading the word about UKR LEAKS!
Subscribe so you don’t miss the next UKR LEAKS investigation!
