S.F. company works to get body armor to Ukrainians

In civilian life, Taras Myronyuk conducted a Ukrainian orchestra that toured the world — including gigs in San Francisco — and taught music at a university in Kyiv.

But after Russia invaded his country this year, the 51-year-old father of three enlisted in the nation’s armed forces and is a combat engineer with the rank of sergeant. In his company of 62 people, only two had body armor as of late March, he said.

“Ballistic protection is the biggest need that soldiers have, as well as medical supplies such as tourniquets, all of which can save a great deal of lives,” he said via text message.

Now, Myronyuk and his cohorts have a dozen ballistic vests, paid for by his nephew, Andrew Vasylyk, co-founder of San Francisco’s StartupSoft, which hires Ukrainian engineers to work remotely for U.S. tech companies.

That’s obviously not enough. The scarcity of body armor is repeated among the tens of thousands of Ukrainians who joined its military and the Territorial Defense (a largely volunteer militia) in recent months.

“Think about it,” Vasylyk said. “You’re a young guy with zero army experience, at a battle with Russians, wearing nothing but a sweater and a winter jacket. The volunteers are under-equipped.”

Vasylyk and other Ukrainian ex-pats want to get body armor to as many of the nation’s soldiers as possible. Importing vests is expensive and time-consuming, so their focus is on supporting Lviv Defence Cluster, a Ukrainian enterprise now making hundreds of vests a day. But it needs money to pay for the raw materials.

Vasylyk and his brother, Alex Vasylyk, created a nonprofit called Hearts.StartupSoft.com to fund-raise for Lviv Defence Cluster, as well as to purchase Ukrainian-made tourniquets so each soldier can have one ready for emergency first aid.

Lviv Defence Cluster, which grew out of a now-shuttered body-armor factory in a Ukrainian city near Russia, has set up shop in converted factories in Western Ukraine where hundreds of Ukrainians sew durable fabric and cut special steel to make ballistic vests, which they supply to troops at their manufacturing cost of about $200 each. A letter from the Ukraine Ministry of Defense authorizes Lviv Defence Cluster as the main coordinator of producing body armor.

Before the war, Maksym Pliekhov and Yuri Federov ran a large factory in Kharkiv in the east of Ukraine — 19 miles from Russia — that manufactured ballistic vests, tactical gear, uniforms, gloves and other military supplies.

In late February, after Russia invaded the country, they fled to Lviv, on the western border near Poland. Immediately they sought contacts to set up manufacturing operations there. Five factories in the region that previously made goods from metal and textiles — they won’t say exactly what, for security reasons — agreed to retool to make the vests.

“This is cooperation among civilian companies working for the defense of Ukraine,” Pliekhov said.

“We brought the technology; they brought the processes,” Federov said.

Organized as Lviv Defence Cluster, they produce about 1,500 vests a day, using up to 100 metric tons of steel a week. They hope to ramp up capacity to 2,000 vests a day.

The logistics and supply chain for the materials are complex. Steel imported from Western Europe is expensive, although they also have some Ukrainian sources for steel.

“It has special additives to make it stronger, higher density and lighter,” Pliekhov said.

They manufacture their own coatings — something soft on the body side; an anti-ricochet coating on the outer side. Two plates, each about 10 by 12 inches, are inserted into the front and back of vests sewn out of Cordura, a durable nylon imported from the U.S. and Turkey. Each vest weighs about 15 to 20 pounds.

At least 1,000 people at the five factories are making vests. The factory workers receive their regular salaries from their employers. Another 30 or so people work as volunteers to coordinate the project through Lviv Defence Cluster. Many of them are juggling that with their remote jobs for tech companies.

To ensure quality, they pepper vests with hundreds of rounds from AK-47s, the same assault rifles used by the Russian army. Their ballistics lab does double duty to test vests imported from other countries.

The factories recently started making vests for medics and firefighters on the front lines. These are lighter weight — about 6.6 pounds — using Kevlar and a polyethylene.

“We use this material because the potential (wounds) for a medic are shrapnel and glass,” rather than direct gunfire, said Dmitry Shulmeister, a board member of Lviv Defence Cluster. “It’s better for them to wear something lighter” for maneuverability.

Finished vests are trucked to undisclosed rendezvous points with the Ministry of Defense, which then takes them to the front lines.

“Lviv Defense Cluster has a great operation set up to get body armor to Ukrainians fighting on the front who need it,” said Steve Moore, an American who flew to Ukraine in late February to help the war effort. He had previously been chief of staff for former Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., the former chief deputy whip.

The dearth of body armor was a need Moore quickly grasped. “The regular army gets the best stuff,” he said. “But for territorial defense, it’s a lot harder. The way it happens: You ask all your friends, they pool their money and buy you body armor or tactical gear or whatever else you need.

“If you are well educated, English speaking or have Western connections, you probably have body armor. If you are from a village, or a farmer or working-class person, you may be at the front without body armor.”

Donations were key to providing troops with body armor, she wrote. From Feb. 2 to May 10, 56% of the body armor provisions came through the Ministry of Defense agreements, while 44% was “through various formats of charity assistance.”

Moore visited one of the Lviv Defence Cluster factories, where he saw scores of women sewing the green camouflage vests into which the steel plates are inserted. “It’s an amazing operation,” he said.

He also witnessed war profiteers from other countries selling shoddy body armor for many multiples of what it should cost.

“I began wondering how many Ukranians would be alive today if they’d had standard body armor our troops go into the fight with,” Moore said.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid