Sergiy Grygorovych, the legendary founder of GSC Game World, creator of the Cossacks and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of games, hasn’t talked much about games or appeared in public for the last 10 years. Thanks to old connections, we managed to lure Sergiy for an interview and spent almost an hour talking about a variety of topics, from the closure of GSC Game World and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 project in December 2011, to the revival of the company, Sergiy’s views on education, assistance to the Armed Forces, and the culture of donations in Ukraine. Sergiy’s wife, Lesia Grygorovych (Rud), founder and head of the Lesia UA Foundation for Assistance to Ukraine’s Defenders, joined the conversation.
As usual, we offer the text and video versions of the interview.
Oleg Danylov: Good afternoon, dear viewers, readers, and listeners of our podcast, and now even of Na Mezhi TV. We have a very unexpected, very interesting guest today, and I hope that he will tell us a lot about something that few people actually know. This is the famous Sergei Grigorievich. I think this man needs no special introduction. Good afternoon, Sergey.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Good afternoon. Thank you.
Oleg Danylov: Yes, you are a legendary person, especially for our readers, many of whom have been reading and listening to us for more than 20 years.
Sergiy, I know that you want to tell us a little bit about what you are doing now for the Ukrainian army and for society. But first and foremost, for our readers and listeners, you, Sergiy, are GSC Game World, the company that made Cossacks and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Everyone has heard a lot, they know very well what you did from 1995 to 2011. And then you went into the shadows, and few people know what happened during that period, so I want to ask you about this period. But, of course, we’ll also talk a little bit about S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and about the Cossacks, and about what happened before.
About the movie “EPISODES: Shadow of Chornobyl” and about GSC Game World
Oleg Danylov: First, I want to ask you, have you watched the new movie about the development of the first S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – “EPISodes: Shadow of Chernobyl, which was recently released in theaters?
Sergiy Grygorovych: Not yet, I’ve only heard about it.
Oleg Danylov: Many people ask why Serhiy Hryhorovych, the main figure of this event, was not in the movie.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Well, I don’t think they did.
Oleg Danylov: Actually, yes, I should probably tell you this better, because I helped a little bit with the making of this movie and was invited to find Sergiy Grygorovych.
I tried to contact Sergiy, but as it turned out, the phone number I called had already been lost by then and he had changed it. I wrote to Yevhen, Sergiy’s younger brother, and Anton Bolshakov, his former partner, but they couldn’t find Sergiy at the time. The film was shot a long time ago, in fact, in November 2022 in Kyiv.
Sergiy didn’t make it into this movie, but I think it turned out very well, because the movie turned out to be so respectful, moderate, very nostalgic and respectful of Sergiy, GSC, the game, the process that was going on at the time. I hope you will see it and give your own opinion about those times.
Do you keep in touch with anyone from those days, with the guys from your team?
Sergiy Grygorovych: Very rarely. With Bolshakov (Anton Bolshakov, Serhiy’s deputy in 1997-2008, founder of AB Games – editor’s note), with Prokhorov (Andriy Prokhorov, project manager of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl project, founder of 4A Games studio – editor’s note), with Yavorsky sometimes (Oleg Yavorsky, PR manager at GSC Game World in 2000-2011, now PR director at VG Entertainment – editor’s note), with ManOwaR (Serhiy Ivantsov, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. programmer – editor’s note), with a system administrator.
Well, as I communicate, so I do business. I persuaded Jaworski to come to us…
Oleg Danylov: To GSC again?
Sergiy Grygorovych: No, not at GSC. He came to work for us as a PR specialist. He said, “Well, where am I going, I’m already working two jobs.”
So, no, not all the time, but we call back from time to time.
Oleg Danylov: You and Anton were very close. From the outside, it seemed that GSC was two people, Sergey Grigorievich and Anton Bolshakov. You somehow complemented each other and you were together as a joint team.
Bolshakov left GSC in 2008, right after S.T.A.L.K.E.R., I think?
Sergiy Grygorovych: No, after the first addon.
Oleg Danylov: He left, did nothing for a while, and now he has his own company, and I think it’s a pretty big company – AB Games.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes.
Oleg Danylov: By the way, he took your way of naming the company, as well as the first letters of your first and last name.
Sergiy Grygorovych: That’s right, that’s what you should do. You need to call the company, what you do, your name and work for your name.
Oleg Danylov: From what I hear, AB Games is a very successful company. Aren’t you disappointed that they seem to have overtaken GSC in terms of revenue?
Sergiy Grygorovych: I think so, yes, we have.
Oleg Danylov: Not bad.
Sergiy Grygorovych: He also spent a long time making his own game, and now he’s finishing it. It turned out to be a good game with a large female audience.
Oleg Danylov: Hidden City, it’s a casual game, a search for items, I think, and they’re constantly releasing updates.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes, these are women, and they are so into this gameplay that it has a female audience. I have not been able to make a single game for women in my life. We have about 2% of women there.
Oleg Danylov: Now they say that there are 40-50% of female players. What, they don’t play S.T.A.L.K.E.R.?
Sergiy Grygorovych: Not S.T.A.L.K.E.R., not Cossacks.
Oleg Danylov: Is it the same in Hidden City?
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes. Hidden City is probably played by only 10% of men and 90% of women. I’ll have to ask Anton, but I think it’s somewhere around those numbers.
Oleg Danylov: Look what I remembered when Anton left. Anton left in 2008, and I think Eugene left GSC in 2009. I even heard that there was some conflict between you and your brother, that you didn’t give him any creative freedom. Or did he leave after the game (Heroes of the Fallen Empires) had a bad start?
Sergiy Grygorovych: No, no, no. “We have completed the first part of Heroes of the Fallen Empires. But, you know, a person often gets tired of a particular job, even if it’s as interesting as developing computer games. People get tired. Well, somehow it just happened.
Oleg Danylov: And he went to work for Unicorn Games, so he also worked on game development?
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes, yes, yes. But there was no such thing as me not giving him freedom. Gradually, from the first addon to the first Cossacks (Cossacks: Back to War) to Heroes of the Fallen Empires, all these projects, he became more and more the project manager, and I became less and less involved in the development. That is, the last project he pulled off completely on his own. He gradually learned.
On the closure of GSC Game World in 2011
Oleg Danylov: I mention this because it seemed to me that people who were close enough to you to help you left. And then the event of December 9, 2011 happened, which the players still remember, and they do not understand what happened then. Neither the players, nor your colleagues, nor your employees understand what happened on December 9, 2011. Why did you decide to stop developing…
Sergiy Grygorovych: You get tired. You get tired of everything, including this [game development].
Firstly, I fired everyone, but at the same time gave them a salary for 2 months in advance, because it was the New Year. And secondly, I already found Dragon Capital (one of the largest investment companies in Ukraine – ed. note), and roughly 80% of the team came to them for free. That is, people found themselves.
Oleg Danylov: Do you mean Survarium?
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes, Survarium (a free-to-play first-person online multiplayer shooter from Vostok Games, now VG Entertainment, created by the natives of GSC Game World. The project was closed in 2022 – editor’s note).
Oleg Danylov: I’m talking about something else. In fact, I remember what you told me during an interview in 2014, and I can quote it. You said that with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. you reached the top, you showed that you can develop world-class games, that Ukraine can develop such games, and that you had nothing to prove beyond that. That you could have spent another 7 years making the same game, burned out even more, and you didn’t have that desire.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes, that’s what happened.
Because we made this game for 7 years, from 1999 to 2006. It took a toll on my finances and on my morale. Many people were getting tired.
Although the team was quite close-knit. And then, a year before the release, we had a revolution (the Orange Revolution of 2004-2005 – editor’s note), and 4A Games left and created their own company. We were already finishing the game ourselves, without these people. They wanted their own way, they wanted to develop on their own, and they were tired of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Oleg Danylov: And they made S.T.A.L.K.E.R. again, but in a dungeon.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes, a linear S.T.A.L.K.E.R. No, they did it and they did it well. It’s great.
Oleg Danylov: By the way, I recently tried to calculate the circulation of the most famous Ukrainian games, based on the data that is publicly available. And I’d like you to comment on these figures, if you remember them, because the publishers have changed…
Sergiy Grygorovych: I don’t remember it well anymore. Well, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was released in a larger number of copies than Cossacks, than Alexander, than Heroes of the Fallen Empires, than all these projects. I don’t remember the circulation now.
Oleg Danylov: I calculated, again, this is an estimate, there is a fork in the road, some of my speculation about how it could be.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl from 4.3 to 4.5 million copies.
Sergiy Grygorovych: It looks like it.
Oleg Danylov: Call of Pripyat – 2.7-2.8 million, Clear Sky – 2.2-2.5 million, Cossacks – 1.1 million. This is without addons, it’s just the bare Cossacks, the first part, European Wars.
Sergiy Grygorovych: No, the Cossacks are much bigger.
Oleg Danylov: Much more, don’t you think? Without The Art of War, without Back to War?
Sergiy Grygorovych: No, Cossacks and the first addons…
Oleg Danylov: 2.5 million is three games. You announced these figures.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes. But now it is no longer 2.5 million, now it is 4 million.
About his passion for motorcycling
Oleg Danylov: Let’s move on to what happened next. You went on vacation, retired. As you told me then, “I retired.” What have you been doing since then?
Sergiy Grygorovych: I became very interested in motorcycling, in road and circuit racing. And in 10 years, I achieved two first places in the German Endurance Cup, the German endurance championship.
Oleg Danylov: How many hours of Endurance?
Sergiy Grygorovych: It varies. The maximum I’ve done is the Barcelona Cup 24 hours. And in 24 hours I had 9 trips of an hour each. More than other pilots in the team. And I took first place in the veterans’ championship in Spain, for those over 40.
Oleg Danylov: Are there separate championships like this?
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yeah. It was also a national championship.
Well, and in other countries, there are many first places. I was doing this for almost two-thirds of the year, and I was abroad all the time. I even had two passports when there were no biometric ones. I was a bit of a chemist, traveling with two passports.
These 2/3 years are constant training sessions, moving from track to track every 3 days, a day off, 3 days again. Traveling all over Europe. I had my own bus, my own mechanics. The bus was fully equipped as a house. That is, you could live there, wash clothes, motorcycles…
Oleg Danylov: So you plunged into this competition.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Well, yes.
Oleg Danylov: But it requires a lot of money. As I understand it, the fees in this kind of motorsport are not so big, it’s all for your own.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes, everything there is for your money. My record was about $700 thousand a year. For everything – for flights, for equipment, for repairs, for repairs after a fall. For motorcycles that were completely burnt out.
And the motorcycle itself is also a consumable. It is advisable to ride for a year and change it. And I always had three motorcycles.
Oleg Danylov: Did you fall a lot, did you have any major injuries?
Sergiy Grygorovych: Well, I must have fallen 50-70 times over the whole time. Most of my fractures were at Chayka when I was riding (Chayka Motor Sports Complex is a racetrack near Kyiv, near the village of Chaiky, Bucha district, Kyiv region – ed.) And for the last 10 years, I promised that I would not go to Chaika at all, not even once. And I never went to the Ukrainian championship again, not even once in 10 years.
Only Europe, because there are safety lanes, everything is thought out, including medical care. The only thing that happened was that my finger rubbed against the asphalt at the Slovakia Ring (a racetrack in Slovakia near Bratislava – ed.) Then there were only bruises, no fractures.
I was on a break. I was involved in [motorcycling] from the age of 22 to 25. There were numerous falls then, too. And I felt that I wouldn’t live to see my grandchildren, so I had to stop. And then, when I started training again, after years of break, these last 10 years, all the falls were with injuries, but no fractures. It’s not like you’re out for 2-3 months.
Oleg Danylov: I understand that you had almost no free time during the race.
Sergiy Grygorovych: And when I came to Kyiv, I used to play table tennis here. For hours on end. I gradually built up my endurance. Before that, I was just a stallion, and here I was already running a half marathon. The physical activity was here in Kyiv, and there in Spain, the motorcycle activity.
About the revival of GSC Game World
Oleg Danylov: What made you come back to game development? I understand that Eugene came to you and said…
Sergiy Grygorovych: Zhenya came and said, “Give me the Kozaki brand, I’ll make Kozaki 3.” I said, “Go ahead and take it.”
Oleg Danylov: Was the game fully funded by you?
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes.
Oleg Danylov: As I understand it, it sold about 560 thousand copies. Did it pay off? Did you get your money back?
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes, yes. We made money on it. And I told him before that, let’s make S.T.A.L.K.E.R..
Oleg Danylov: So it was you who suggested that he do S.T.A.L.K.E.R.?
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes, yes. And he says, “No, I don’t want S.T.A.L.K.E.R., it’s not my thing at all.” And then he comes and says, “I’m ready, I want to make S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.
Oleg Danylov: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a little bit different, with a different team…
Sergiy Grygorovych: But the market grew by 30-40% every year, plus compound interest. You can calculate how much it has grown in 10 years. That is, the same S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is already 450-500% more in circulation. And the prices of the games themselves have also increased.
And on top of that, the amount of money the publisher charges you has decreased. Previously, you could lose up to 75%, and in the situation with Electronic Arts, for example, you could lose 85%. That is, you only got 15%. Now it’s not the case. Steam takes 30% and everyone has the same conditions.
Oleg Danylov: There is even a progressive percentage. It’s lower if you have more copies.
Sergiy Grygorovych: I don’t know these details. But I have heard that they treat everyone equally fairly.
Oleg Danylov: You invested your brand and money in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes.
Oleg Danylov: At the first stage, was it not Microsoft’s money?
Sergiy Grygorovych: No. At first, it was my personal money. And then I got another partner, Max Krippa, who owns the Parus [business center] (as well as the eSports team NAVI and a share of the Maincast service – ed.) He further financed.
Oleg Danylov: What is your role in GSC and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. now? Who are you?
Sergiy Grygorovych: I am not involved in operational activities at all. They are spread over three offices – Kyiv, Prague and Cyprus. No, I am retired.
Oleg Danylov: At the end of last year, there was even some kind of notification that you were removed from the list of GSC owners and your partner became the owner of GSC.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes
Oleg Danylov: So you have nothing to do with GSC at all now?
Sergiy Grygorovych: Only income after the project is released.
About the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trademarks, series, books and clothing
Oleg Danylov: And as for the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trademark, is it still yours?
Sergiy Grygorovych: No, GSC Global.
Oleg Danylov: Okay. I remember that back in 2008 you wanted to make a series about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Sergiy Grygorovych: I even shot one episode. There was a pilot. But it was a very beautiful picture, and the actors seemed to be good. But…
I traveled around Moscow, visited different publishers, roughly speaking, because I wanted to make a series. Not just one episode, but a series. But they looked at it all, but showed no interest. So I decided to let it go.
Oleg Danylov: Now there are series from big companies based on The Witcher, Last of Us, Fallout. So it seems that there is interest. Can we expect a series based on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. from Netflix?
Sergiy Grygorovych: We can wait, but Netflix hasn’t asked us about it yet.
The problem is in the script, mostly. Because we can make a good production with our own hands. You can make a professional translation into any language. It is difficult to write a very interesting script. Because a game is still a game, and a movie is something else. A movie script is written according to different laws.
We tried, and it didn’t work out. We postponed it for a while, when someone really big, powerful would come and say, “That’s it, we’re investing money, we’re hiring the best directors in Hollywood. And they will write the script”.
Oleg Danylov: I think in 2019, I talked to Postmodern Digital in Kyiv, which is a group of FILM.UA. And Yegor Borshchevsky (Postmodern’s CEO – editor’s note) told me then that they would love to take on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. I asked him if he had talked to Grigorovich. He said he couldn’t answer that question. Did you have such conversations?
Sergiy Grygorovych: No, well, we talked. We’re not under an NDA [so we can talk about it].
Oleg Danylov: That is, if anything, FILM.UA may try to make a series if there is a good script.
Let’s hope that when S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is released, the interest in the universe will increase and maybe we will really see…
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes, maybe it will. Let’s hope so.
Oleg Danylov: I think there was a huge series of books. It was incredibly huge, something like 200 books on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Did all of this remain in Moscow?
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes. From ACT and Exmo. We seem to have published both (in 2012, these Russian publishing houses merged into Exmo-AST – editor’s note).
Oleg Danylov: No desire to revive this series?
Sergiy Grygorovych: No, they didn’t. They “squeezed” the brand for books.
Oleg Danylov: Do they ever come out? I don’t know, I don’t follow it.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Now? Yes. They are coming out, but there are no more [large] editions. (as of now, more than 365 books have been published in the series, the latest editions are May 2024 – ed.)
Oleg Danylov: You mean they’re coming out with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. on the cover? Oh, my God!
I think someone said that this series could even be submitted to the Guinness Book of Records by the number of books.
Sergiy Grygorovych: I was talking about the number of books in the series, yes. Yavorsky wrote them an application at the time. They didn’t respond either. We were like, “Oh, well.”
Oleg Danylov: And there was a lot more. There was also a very interesting line of clothing, I think.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes, it paid off for me, but we didn’t continue to produce it. I just realized that as a business, tailoring is a complicated business.
Oleg Danylov: The models there were incredibly simple. With a bunch of pockets and flaps.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes. And this made everything very expensive. And given that our print runs were small, from 100 to 1000 pieces, the cost was high. That is, if we had 10,000 units each, and we would have merged with some other brand, G-Star, for example, as a sub-line. Like Adidas, for example, with Porsche Design. Then I think it would have been interesting. But we couldn’t come to an agreement.
And considering that I was closing the entire company, I closed all the departments on the same day.
Oleg Danylov: Is there no desire to revive it now? NAVI makes its clothes there, and I think there are many others.
Sergiy Grygorovych: There is a desire.
Oleg Danylov: There were very, very interesting models, but they were so expensive for the time.
Sergiy Grygorovych: The cost of production there was considerable. One pair of jeans cost us $65 in production costs. We sold them for $100.
This is not how you should work with clothes. It should be 20% cost, 80% extra. Because all the same… there are sizes that are not accepted, everything is scattered in different stores, either lost, given away, or returned. Or something else. So they start selling them at a discount. And out of the 80%, about 10% remains when there are big sales. This is the business…
But it was interesting. I was interested in doing clothes. It was very interesting.
Oleg Danylov: It’s completely different from anything else you’ve done.
Sergiy Grygorovych: They were different groups. Those who were in S.T.A.L.K.E.R., not a single person was involved in the development of clothes. And those girls who made the clothes, they made pencil sketches of the game, and then figured out how we could sew it.
Oleg Danylov: That’s what I wanted to ask you. Back in the late 2010s, you were, well, probably a rock star in the game world. A kind of our Ukrainian Romero. You were driving a red Ferrari…
Sergiy Grygorovych: There it is.
Oleg Danylov: You were speaking on stage in front of a crowd. Thousands of people applauded you. You held your own concert with a guitar on the Maidan. You went out and sang songs on the Maidan. Do you have any regrets about those times? You were really such a public figure. A rock star.
Sergiy Grygorovych: No, I don’t regret it. I had time to rest. I realized that I could not close the company, go to bed, open my eyes in the morning and not know where to go. I replaced it with motorcycling. I replaced it with sports.
About the fund to help the defenders of Ukraine and their wealth
Oleg Danylov: From S.T.A.L.K.E.R., we’ll move on to another topic that Serhiy has already mentioned and that he is currently concerned about. And we are joined by Sergiy’s wife, Lesia Hryhorovych, who runs the foundation…
Lesya Grygorovych: Foundation for Assistance to Defenders of Ukraine Lesia UA.
Oleg Danylov: Sergiy, as I understand it, is the main patron of this foundation.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes
Lesya Grygorovych: Of course.
Oleg Danylov: I have even heard it said that Grygorovych has spent almost all of his fortune on helping the Armed Forces.
Sergiy Grygorovych: And so it is.
Lesya Grygorovych: We are moving fast… We are not resting on our laurels and are thinking about where else to get the funds to bring our victory even closer.
About the Maidan protest in 2014
Oleg Danylov: Let’s move on to this smoothly and recall an event that struck me at the beginning of the war in 2014. Immediately after the Maidan, even during the Maidan, Sergiy Grygorovych held a very interesting action… he walked around the Maidan with the Russian tricolor.
Sergiy Grygorovych: No, not the tricolor. It was a St. George’s ribbon.
Oleg Danylov: Yes, that’s right, it was a St. George’s ribbon. To show the Russians that there are no Banderites here. That even a person who goes to the Maidan with a St. George’s ribbon will not be harmed, even if he or she speaks Russian. That there are no Banderites here.
Sergiy Grygorovych: It was against pro-Russian propaganda. I was still helping UrkLife and StopFake there. They also ridiculed the fact that we have Nazism here. But we didn’t even have nationalism.
Oleg Danylov: In fact, yes.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Everyone had ordinary patriotism. Now it’s starting to be a little bit, well, nationalism is needed for war. For young people, for them to understand where, how, what.
But still, when I talked to the military, to nationalists, and spoke Russian, no one ever made a remark. That is, it is not a question.
Oleg Danylov: You were trying to prove something to the Russians…
Sergiy Grygorovych: It was Dmitry Puchkov, the Goblin. He made humorous translations of movies, The Lord of the Rings and several other…
Oleg Danylov: I know who Goblin is, and I know who he has become now.
Sergiy Grygorovych: At that time, I was always on the Internet about their ideological attitude against us. He said: “They will kill you there”. I said: “Look!”. And he left. I came to [Maidan], gave interviews to TV channels, went to the Chechen tent. And nothing happened. I took some photos. I laid flowers for the Heavenly Hundred. Opposite the Lenin Museum (Ukrainian House – ed. note). It was like that. And I posted it all on the Internet.
Oleg Danylov: I wanted to ask you something else. I mean, you thought then that it was possible to explain something to the Russians. Now do you think that it still makes sense to explain something to them?
Sergiy Grygorovych: At that time, it was still possible to explain somehow. However, they were working on propaganda before 2014.
I haven’t had a TV at home since the Orange Revolution. Back then I had ORT, RTR, NTV+, all Russian channels. I didn’t watch Ukrainian channels at all. Our television was of low quality back then, it was just not interesting. And here everything was so colorful, people were talking. And every day I would come home after work and watch these Russian channels. And then the Orange Revolution started…
Then I gathered everyone, the whole office, and said: “I’m paying your salaries. Who is for our orange guys? Welcome!” Well, almost everyone got up and went to the Maidan. And we stayed there until the end of the Maidan.
But I used to come home in the evenings and watch the same ORT.
Oleg Danylov: How they highlight all this…
Sergiy Grygorovych: I was so sick of listening to ORT and watching the “give me a clip and a TT in oil” stuff. I turned off the TV completely. And I forbade my children to watch it. Only computer games. Or Ukrainian TV channels.
Oleg Danylov: By the way, Russian computer games are also gradually promoting this propaganda. This is Pobedobesiye, the cult of victory. They recently released a game called Partisans. Now they are making a game, unfortunately, about the “valiant DPR” and the fight against the Ukrops…
On the outbreak of a full-scale war and assistance to the military
Oleg Danylov: Let’s move on. The war started, a full-scale war. And as I understand it, you started investing in the Ukrainian Armed Forces from the very beginning.
I will remember this moment. It seemed very funny to me. At the beginning of the full-scale war, I called Andrei Prokhorov. And he said to me: “You know, I want to help. I’m even thinking that maybe we should talk to Grigorovich and Bolshakov, that the three of us can get together and buy a tank battalion for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.” I said: “Do you know how much a tank battalion costs?”
Sergiy Grygorovych: They give away a lot of things as written off. We bring them here to repair them. And we have equipment. A lot of it. Cars, armored vehicles. All the old stuff they have there… and thanks for that, we will use it.
Oleg Danylov: So you buy military equipment at military depots?
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes, yes. It is being demilitarized, machine guns are being removed, and the vehicles are driving just like a car. Later we also bought pickup trucks.
Oleg Danylov: There were about a hundred of them together with NAVI. The first batch, then another batch.
Sergiy Grygorovych: The one with NAVI is the T4, the Volkswagen Transporter. We have participated in this together with NAVI, probably about 500-600 units. Plus they are even more.
We bought pickup trucks and are still buying them. Cars are like seeds on the front line. There is no equipment at all, even if you can ride bicycles. So we bought 96 cross-country motorcycles for them.
Oleg Danylov: Your motorcycle sport has found you again!
Sergiy Grygorovych: Well, yes. I even have a video of a soldier walking in full armor, wearing a helmet. He said: “Well, you can’t walk all the time”. That’s why they use motorcycles.
They have already arrived, they are already in Ukraine. Now we will be taking exams from those who know how to use a cross-country motorcycle and give out. And provide them with support. Anyway, they will rarely wash them, so the sprockets and chains will be “eaten”. Plus, I dropped something somewhere, and the crankcase cover cracked. So all these spare parts… Our “technicians” will quickly arrive and either bring a new motorcycle, take the old one away, or [repair it on the spot]…
Oleg Danylov: You even have your own technical parts!
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes, yes, yes, of course. And the parts that train people. We have our own drone school. That’s why all motorcycles will come with cases. First, I have agreed with TacMed that they will conduct tactical medicine classes, and on the other hand, the cases will hold two 7-inch drones, and ammunition.
About the pilot school and drone manufacturing
Oleg Danylov: Not bad. And about the drone school, it’s in the…
Sergiy Grygorovych: We opened in Lutsk.
Oleg Danylov: Це FPV-дрони?
Lesya Grygorovych: Yes, yes, FPV drones.
Oleg Danylov: How many pilots have you already trained?
Lesya Grygorovych: Our school has been officially operating in Lutsk for several months now. We had to set up the logistics, find teachers, classrooms, and start the process. [We had to find people who wanted to study with us.
There are a lot of people who want to do it. At first it was not the military, all civilians. And recently, a lot of military people have been studying with us. We pay for their accommodation and meals. They come to us on request from their units.
Oleg Danylov: Units send them?
Lesya Grygorovych: Yes, they send the units. Afterwards, we give them a document certifying that they have been trained. There are a lot of police officers now, from different law enforcement agencies.
Oleg Danylov: Can I ask you a question? They say that in order to start learning to fly drones, you need to start with a game, with Liftoff?
Sergiy Grygorovych: And so it is. There are laptops, and the training program is launched first. Then there are these small drones we bought [shows a drone about 3 inches in size]. Under the chair, they learn to fly, to fly in a circle. These are small [drones] in the room.
Oleg Danylov: Of course, this is to avoid killing a healthy, expensive drone.
Sergiy Grygorovych: At that time, we were already issuing sevens, we also made eights and tens, and now we are testing a thirteen.
Oleg Danylov: Do you mean the size of the rotors?
Sergiy Grygorovych: Size, physical size – diagonal.
Lesya Grygorovych: At our school, education is free and we cover all expenses. Compared to other schools we have funded.
[There is no longer, so to speak, our school in one place. These are other volunteers who found the training centers, but all the funding is ours-drones, tables, all the equipment. But they charge tuition because they buy the drones. Either one is free for training, or if you beat the second or third one, you have to pay for the next one, or come with your own drone, for example.
And we provide all this for free, so that more people would be interested. Because if a person comes to buy a drone, where can they get the money if the minimum wage is the same as your drone? Do you want to have any skills?
Oleg Danylov: I see.
Sergiy Grygorovych: That is, by the end of the month, we will have delivered more than four thousand drones. Of these, 200-250 are Mavic and a little over 200 are Mavic 3T. These are the ones that are very expensive.
Lesya Grygorovych: We actively started doing this and opened the fund last summer. Before that, in 2022, Serhiy donated money to Prytula and Khlyvniuk. A very large amount to the “Come Back Alive” fund as well. It’s $800 thousand, right?
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes, yes. And the Armed Forces, too.
Lesya Grygorovych: When we decided what to do in Ukraine and decided that we needed to help Ukraine, we opened our own foundation and quickly decided to give everything that Sergiy had…
Oleg Danylov: Spend. As the saying goes, “a woman spends a man’s money.”
Lesya Grygorovych: You know, sometimes I was surprised that 2-3 weeks had passed and there was no certain amount of money. Later on, you somehow start to divide it up a little bit, to give it to somebody, to withhold it from others. But everyone needs it! And there are a lot of requests, 200-300 requests each, and you know you can’t do it all.
And there are even those who have complaints. But we are very grateful to everyone. They also believe in us. We will find [new] opportunities because we realize that money is running out. We want people to believe in us as well. We also want to collect donations. If people don’t support us, we won’t be able to provide this resource.
As for the drones, Serhiy said that we have started making our own drones.
Oleg Danylov: Do you have your own laboratory?
Lesya Grygorovych: Now we want to get it certified. We met with the ministry. It’s all very difficult. There is corruption everywhere. Everyone wants to make money, but we don’t want to make money in the war.
This month we want to do a big project. It’s two thousand drones. A thousand? One and a half! To make a video for people to join in, to see what we are doing. And each of your hryvnias will make a big contribution to our victory.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes, this is the strategy. To introduce a culture of donation into the life of society. So that there is no one left who is “my house is at the end of the line”. You have a small salary, a ridiculous 4 thousand hryvnias, and I’m sorry, 1% of it, 40 hryvnias, a dollar, sign up to have it deducted from your card every month. That is, not once, but constantly, automatically to the general fund. And our fund will choose how to distribute this money, what is more important to buy.
Because there was a time when EcoFlow was needed a lot, and we distributed EcoFlow cars there. But now it is no longer needed, and rarely anyone asks for it. There was a time when drones were needed, like, really badly. And now there are sometimes 6 drones in a row [for takeoff]. They are still needed, but 6 people are lined up to launch their FPV due to a lack of frequencies.
But at the same time, in many areas, there is a lack of people who know how to do this. The strategy is very simple. To move the war from the [concept of] “face to face” to “drone against drone”.
Oleg Danylov: Are the Russians producing more drones now?
Sergiy Grygorovych: It looks like it’s bigger. But no one knows what’s going on there.
Oleg Danylov: I heard somewhere that they have more quantity and we have better quality.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Our quality is 100% better and we have more quality pilots. We have much more ace pilots. This is what I hear from time to time from the front.
Lesya Grygorovych: If the production of our drones is better, of course, it is better, because China bans supplies to Ukraine. And we are now talking to those sellers with intermediaries, and they say that China is against it, it does not allow us to buy the latest technologies for Ukraine.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Another fund had a battery chip that was cut through. So it would fly for about a kilometer, overheat, and crash.
Oleg Danylov: Is it the Chinese who do this?
Sergiy Grygorovych: It’s either the Chinese or the sabotage of those who supplied the drones.
Oleg Danylov: Wow.
Sergiy Grygorovych: If we make them ourselves, we listen carefully to what is wrong, what can be changed from what has been done. We listen carefully to the military, who work with this every day in practice.
And if, for example, drones often go through the State Order, then there are drones that do not fly. I mean, they are good for training, yes, but if you want to use them in combat, you can’t.
Oleg Danylov: Not enough speed, range?
Sergiy Grygorovych: The speed, range, and battery are not enough. The camera is of very poor quality. We have everything of great quality. The best of what is on the market. But we are not the only ones, which is good news. I know other manufacturers who are more powerful than us.
Oleg Danylov: It seems to me that Anton Bolshakov, at the beginning of the full-scale war, was also going to do something like this.
Sergiy Grygorovych: I think he was making “cows” (heavy agricultural drones converted for dropping – ed. note). But Anton is as silent as Zoya Kosmodemianska. “I went into FPV, and he started making ‘cows’. Well, a ‘cow’ is also a necessary thing.
Next, we are working on the software. That is, we are working on switching between frequencies, the principle of switching and sending packets. We are working on the drone’s behavior if the EW jammer is turned off.
Lesya Grygorovych: I understand that even after the full-scale invasion is over, Serhiy will not stop, he is passionate about it. And he wants to invent something.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes. Well, after the war… I mean, we still have to “dress” many armies of the world.
Oleg Danylov: I know that you also have another area that I wanted to talk about – humanitarian aid. Among other things, you help educational institutions, children, and orphanages.
Lesya Grygorovych: Yes.
On attitudes towards education
Oleg Danylov: I just wanted to start with something… Serhiy and I discussed this topic many times 20 years ago – his attitude to learning. Because Serhiy always said that he wasted his time at school. Especially in high school, he wasted his time. And at the institute, too. And even his younger brother, I think, he took him out of the last classes and never let him formally graduate. Even though he passed the exam, he was already working with Serhii at GSC for the last few years. Has your attitude to education changed? When you started helping children, for example. What do you think education should be like now?
Sergiy Grygorovych: The world is changing, and all education is moving to the home. So the most important thing that a child needs to be able to do is self-learning. So, you want to learn Pascal? Go to the Internet, find a description, and learn it. With examples.
David, how old is 11?
Lesya Grygorovych: 11.
Sergiy Grygorovych: He often asks me questions, and I tell him: “No, go find the documentation, find it yourself, figure it out.” And the kid does it.
Oleg Danylov: It’s a kind of learning by throwing in the water.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes, yes.
Lesya Grygorovych: I said, “Give me a hint. Because he is also learning a programming language. So tell me. No, go yourself, look it up, google it. Tell me.
Sergiy Grygorovych: I suggest some things, but not others.
Lesya Grygorovych: I’ll add something about education. Our first meeting was when we met. Sergei asked me, “Do you think it’s right for children to go to school and study there?” I said: “Of course, they get accustomed to society, communication, respect for each other, develop, and look for themselves.” And he says no, that it’s a waste of time and you can stay at home until the 11th grade and study with a tutor, and it brings more benefits and more knowledge. I said: “Then the child is degraded, because he does not understand what is happening in the yard, what it means to fall, to fight.” You grow up yourself, and then you don’t know how to go on, how to survive.
We often argue with him about it. No matter what friends or acquaintances come to visit us, he argues and argues about it. And when I ask him, “What kind of education do you have?” He says, “I have none. I didn’t finish there, I couldn’t do it. So I went to school and learned. I wiped my pants for nothing.”
Oleg Danylov: If you look at people who have incomplete higher education, it’s Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Sergey Grigorievich. You seem to have completed the course.
Sergiy Grygorovych: No, I didn’t even pass the first semester. This was at the KPI, at the Radio Engineering Department. And then I failed the first year, the first semester at the International Science and Technology University. I went to study management and marketing. But the money just pounced. Where to study?
Oleg Danylov: Don’t have time, have to make money.
Lesya Grygorovych: That’s a nice way of putting it, “pounced”. But still, he took what he needed. He heard what he needed. It took him such a short period of time to realize what he needed to do.
Sergiy Grygorovych: A management professor at the second university said: “You will realize that each of you will become a director in a company. It doesn’t mean that you have to have 50 different degrees. You just have to be able to manage a company and 50 different specialists, each of whom is a god in their own field.” That was it. That’s how I remember it. I thought, okay, we’re looking for people, we’re recruiting.
Oleg Danylov: So you tried to hire the best.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes.
Oleg Danylov: The next topic, which actually also concerns education… You once told me that we need to make our own games and teach children, including our history, through games about our history. That we don’t need to look at some samurai or cowboys, that we have our own Cossacks, we have our own S.T.A.L.K.E.R., we have our own brands on which to base our products.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes.
Oleg Danylov: Now we have our own war, we have our own heroes, and we need games about it. Or is it too early?
Sergiy Grygorovych: It’s too early, I think. This is too sensitive a topic in society. I mean, it’s too early to make a game about it.
Lesya Grygorovych: But we have been repeatedly rejected for ideas. We’ve been talking to people and they say let’s make a game about these events, about this war.
Oleg Danylov: So other developers are already coming to you for funding?
Sergiy Grygorovych: They came, yes.
Lesya Grygorovych: A few days ago we had a meeting and they want to release a game to motivate children.
Oleg Danylov: They are already developing a role-playing game about the siege of Mariupol, where you have to play as a boy. But I couldn’t do it. I tried, I lost on February 23, you can lose that day, and then February 24 comes. And when February 24 came, I put the game aside and said, “No, I just can’t play anymore, I’m sorry!”
On the culture of donations and helping children
Oleg Danylov: What else would you like to tell us about the foundation’s work? What excites you, what fires you up? What should we do now?
Sergiy Grygorovych: Now we need to convince everyone to participate in donations.
Oleg Danylov: People are already tired and disappointed. There are a lot of foundations and fees.
Sergiy Grygorovych: ТThat’s why I say a dollar, but every month and steadily. Not necessarily to us, not necessarily to any other fund you believe in. And watch closely how they spend it, how they report, and so on. I mean, the tax authorities will still check the numbers of the funds. But it is necessary that the foundations, including ours, “sell” people the belief in victory.
Oleg Danylov: It is important. Yes, I agree with you.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Because if you take, for example, the donations that are sent to us from Germany for free in the field of medicine, for example, various things, even for complex operations. We get equipment from Europe at a big discount. They will donate, but they don’t want to donate for drones.
Oleg Danylov: Often, large Western companies simply cannot do this.
Lesya Grygorovych: They make comments. They are against it, they don’t want to see blood, killing. They want us to help animals, children, and society.
Sergiy Grygorovych: You must admit that one dollar is not a problem.
Oleg Danylov: No, it’s not a problem.
Sergiy Grygorovych: For someone who has a $1,000 salary, give them $10.
Oleg Danylov: For example, I spend 20-30 percent of every month on donations. It’s just something I decided to do. An additional tax on the war. If you can, you should give. If you can’t, at least a dollar. So that you have something to do with this victory.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Yes, and this needs to be instilled. This is what we are talking about now. We want everyone to give at least a dollar, ten, whatever they have, one percent of their income… A person will not become poorer if he gives one percent. But given that we have 35 million active adults, it may well be [not bad].
Lesya Grygorovych: We also have such a direction as children. We have many children returned from the east who have no place to live with their mothers or are complete orphans. We are looking for a place for them to live, something to do. We send them to rehabilitation centers, help them with everything they need, and pay for their accommodation. We also have a center called Zamlynnia, where Father Yan takes care of them. Mothers and children stay there for a certain period of time.
And most of the children are orphans, they are in schools and boarding schools. The person who runs the center is Tatyana Milkowska, and she does her best to find families for the children, to find them housing, to give them education. They are engaged in activities, we have a rehabilitation center, they are engaged in creativity there. They go to schools, colleges, and become painters and artists. Their products are sold abroad and children begin to believe in themselves.
I believe that different ways should be sought to find this help. But our people, the majority of them, look at who you are, what you do. They evaluate the outside, not who you are and what you do.
Oleg Danylov: I understand. I understand your irritation about this.
Conclusion
Oleg Danylov: I want to summarize with this conclusion. That if you can donate, if you want to donate, donate to someone you trust. If you trust a person, like Sergiy Grygorovych, you know what he has done. You know the games he has made. If you trust him, donate to him. If you trust someone else, anyone, Prytula, Democratic Ax, whoever you want. If you trust these people, you know that they report, you know that they really help the military, do it. It will be the right thing to do.
Lesya Grygorovych: Yes, not in word but in deed.
Sergiy Grygorovych: And minus the “my house is on the edge” thing. My house is not on the edge, all our houses are in the same country.
Oleg Danylov: Yes, all our houses are almost on the front line. Anything can come to us.
Thank you, Sergiy, and thank you, Lesya, for coming. Good luck with what you’re doing. And…
Lesya Grygorovych: Together to victory. Thank you.
Sergiy Grygorovych: Thank you, too.
Loading comments …