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CNN —
Creators from various countries, including the US, Germany, Poland, and Ukraine, are generously donating their time and talents to support Ukraine's official fundraising platform, United24. They are recreating Ukrainian monuments as unique LEGO sets. These sets are not available for purchase, but can be won through a raffle for donations of $24 or more to United24. Donations will go towards rebuilding structures destroyed during the ongoing defensive war with Russia and other relief efforts.
Courtesy of Roy Schwartz
Roy Schwartz
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky created United24 as a personal effort to attract more international aid through mass fundraising projects, including soccer matches, art shows, music videos, celebrity ambassadors and even a Minecraft donation center, a virtual recreation of Ukraine's Soledar salt mine.
According to United24 coordinator Yaroslava Gres, the name United24 comes from the initiative's goal of “providing 24/7 support in support of Ukraine,” but the number 24 has a deeper meaning for Ukrainians: Aug. 24 is Ukraine's Independence Day, and Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
Gress said United24 has raised more than $650 million since its launch in May 2022, with donors from 110 countries helping to rebuild and reconstruct five hospitals, 18 homes and 24 bridges, as well as purchase 240 ambulances and 659 hospital generators. Donations have also helped fund defense systems against suicide drones and tens of thousands of Ukrainian drones, and develop battlefield robots.
United24's financing has been guaranteed by international accounting firm Deloitte, which is providing its services pro bono, amid concerns about widespread government corruption in Ukraine, including a recent arms procurement scandal.
Last month, the United States sent $275 million in military aid to Ukraine as part of a $6 billion long-term military assistance package announced in late April. The United States has sent a total of $175 billion to Ukraine to date, but only $2.9 billion of that is humanitarian aid, according to a Council on Foreign Relations report. The World Bank recently estimated that damage to Ukraine's infrastructure and economy could total $152 billion between February 2022 and December 2023.
Gress told me that 391 schools have been destroyed and 3,282 damaged, and that they will need about $14 billion to rebuild, with another $14 billion needed to rebuild and repair health facilities.
United 24
Depicted in the Lego miniature is Kiev's Golden Gate, released as part of United24's second series of Ukrainian monument replicas.
As the Russian-Ukrainian war approaches its 30th month in August, the world's fickle attention is mainly focused on the Middle East and the upcoming US elections. United24 wants to keep the focus on Ukraine's fight for survival. This fight is not going well. In recent months, Russia has been capturing and retaking strategic positions, making its fastest advance since the start of the war.
Lego is probably the greatest toy ever made, but it's still a strange choice for a toy to be chosen for a war fund campaign. But Lego has been helping Ukraine from the beginning. In March 2022, one month after the war began, and again in September 2022, the Lego Foundation donated about $30 million to rebuild schools and other educational institutions in Ukraine, as well as to provide education to Ukrainian refugees in other countries.
In March 2022, Chicago-based toy manufacturer Citizen Brick raised more than $145,000 for Ukraine with a custom Lego minifigure of President Zelenskyy.
The inspiration for the LEGO campaign came from these efforts as well as LEGO Architecture, a series of sets aimed at adults that recreate iconic landmarks: According to Gre, “If it includes the Eiffel Tower, London Bridge and the Statue of Liberty, there's no reason why we can't include the Motherland Monument in Kyiv.”
The first set, which United24 will release in November 2023, is titled “#LEGOWITHUKRAINE” and includes Mother Ukraine in Kiev, the Swallow's Nest in Crimea, and the Old Water Tower in Mariupol. The second set, “#UKRAINEinLEGObricks,” released last month, includes the Golden Gate in Kiev, Khan's Palace in Crimea, Pidhirtsy Castle in Lviv Oblast, the National Opera in Odessa, and the Observatory in Mykolaiv.
United 24
The Mykolaiv Observatory appears in the second installment of the Lego monument recreation series.
While all models are made with real LEGO bricks, LEGO is not affiliated with the project or the artists creating the sets. The second wave of five models are being sold in three sets each, giving donors a chance to win one of 15 sets.
Donors can choose which lottery they want to enter and which of United24's five goals their donation will support — defense, humanitarian mine action, medical assistance, rebuilding Ukraine, and education and science — Gress said. All donations in the second round, however, will go toward rebuilding the Veliko Kostrom'ska School, a kindergarten and primary school in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast that was bombed in October 2022.
Mark Szegedy is an American Lego artist from Chicago and the creator of the Pidhirtsy Castle set. “This was a unique way to combine my passion for Lego with a very worthy cause: helping to rebuild destroyed schools. Thanks to this project, 250 children in Ukraine will be able to study again,” he told me.
After choosing the landmarks he wanted to recreate, it took him around 80 hours to design and build the set, with the project taking five months to complete. “Getting the scale and angles of the castle just right was incredibly challenging,” he says. “It was really rewarding and I feel like I've been able to develop my LEGO building skills whilst contributing to a great cause.”
The Golden Gate set was created by American LEGO artist Eric Lo, who first learned about the project on LEGO fan site The Brothers Brick, saying: “When I saw the Golden Gate I thought it would be a fun building to build, so I got involved. … But then I read about its history and fell in love with the idea of building it.”
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It took him a month to first digitally design it on the computer, then another week to build the actual set. “The shape is full of arches,” he told me. “I had to remake it six times to get it right.”
“I live near Tacoma in an area with a large Ukrainian community, and I work with a lot of Ukrainians,” Lo continued. “When the models are done, I show them to them, and it's so much fun to see the look on their faces.”
Gress said he expects a third wave of Lego sets, but “for now we're focused on bringing attention to the second wave.”
Ukraine's road ahead is difficult and uncertain, but it can be rebuilt with the help of small toy blocks.
