Like flying on a Harry Potter broom: how does the Zesyky 9 ¾ military training school work?

Rubryka spoke with Olesya Korzhenevska, Zesyky 9 ¾ founder, about the conclusions she made from the first recruitment to the school, and why they don't want to scale the project to all regions.

How to choose your specialty in the army? Is operating drones easy? How do assaults happen? How to properly use a tactical first aid kit? Ukrainian civilians often face confusion or lack of idea about what lies ahead of mobilization.

To help potential volunteers and support them, Olesya Korzhenevska, a volunteer, producer, and owner of the School of Audiovisual Arts 9¾, created the Zesyky 9 ¾ project. The school's name is a diminutive form of ZSU, the Ukrainian abbreviation for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. 

The founder also calls Zesyky an "army preschool." The main goal is to prepare civilians for the challenges they may face after joining the army.

Education structure

The course consists of offline and online blocks. The students start with lectures on the structure of the armed forces — what ground troops, divisions, and battalions are, and how they are all built. They start by studying the types of troops, how a battalion differs from a company, what ranks there are, where to go if the wrong orders are given, and other issues that may arise in the course of action. "After the classes, people have an order in their heads. They finally can distinguish a company from a brigade and stop confusing a platoon with a battalion," says the school's founder.

After the tactical medicine class. Denys Kurta, an instructor of Tactical Medicine North, and Olesya Korzhenevska, the founder of Zesyky 9 ¾. Photo: Anastasiia Rozhynska

After the introductory block, students begin training in all other areas—military recruiting, tactical medicine, drones, shooting, and close-quarters combat (CQB). For three and a half months, students met three to four times a week for master classes, and lectures held online and offline.

For example, the CQB classes took place like this: Zesyk students met and went to a special area, where they studied how assaults occur in buildings or on the street. They learned  to work in groups and solo and practiced elementary skills, like falling safely to evade the grenade explosion area.

In CQB classes, the students mostly use airsoft guns or dummies. Separately from these exercises, students go to shooting ranges, where they practice shooting with real firearms.

CQB classes. Photo: Veronika Nanovska

The next course is a small group of 18 students. The group is divided into three sixes — three crews changing every Saturday.

At a minimum, each Zesyk student must complete three long training sessions on drones before going on a mission. Students not only learn the basics of piloting but also know how to make drops from drones.

In addition, there are regular meetings with the military. School students organize conversations with pilots, scouts, attack aircraft, anti-aircraft gun operators, etc. This gives a basic understanding of the different types of troops and the characteristics of each profession.

About 35% of classes are online and are saved on the school's closed YouTube channel. Students meet for practical classes with military instructors or individually without teachers and practice the acquired knowledge and skills independently. They also look for a lot of additional information or other specialized courses and are happy to share their findings.

Tactical medicine classes. Photo: Anastasiia Rozhynska

The concept of gentle mobilization

Korzhenevska says the instructors who teach the course do not romanticize the war. They honestly convey information to students and explain everything they can face.

"A person must consciously choose to join the army, understand what will happen to them, and have a clear algorithm of actions," Korzhenevska continues. When you are given a great base, as we have, there is an understanding of what awaits you next. I believe that the concept of gentle mobilization has justified itself."

The project gives students a vector of development: those who were afraid understood something for themselves, which made them more confident; those who romanticized the army stopped doing so and realized that there is nothing romantic about war and better understood where to go and what the next steps should be.

Thanks to Zesyky, some students have a new goal — to teach the military. "You can remain a civilian and train soldiers as a military instructor," Korzhenevska adds. Pavlo Skurenivskyi, one of the school's instructors, teaches drone piloting primarily to military personnel, but there are also civilians among his students.

Classes on operating drones. Photo: Natalka Shkurat

According to Korzhenevska, she does not have a ready-made recipe for creating a similar project of a military training school. According to the founder of Zesyky, the main thing is to understand what education is and provide high-quality educational services.

"If you understand how it is built and have great connections, agreements, and a good reputation among defenders, then everything will definitely work out," the founder is sure. "Thanks to the fact that I have had the opportunity to help the army since 2014, I have a lot of friends and acquaintances among the military who find time to train our Zesyky students, even from a trench or a dugout. Starlink is on, and classes are being held." 

She also says that it will not be possible to limit oneself to the online format — it is simply impossible to conduct training in tactical medicine and shooting, as in other disciplines, purely virtually.

Classes on operating drones. Photo: Natalka Shkurat

"I would very much like such schools to open nationwide and the price to be affordable. We have a new three-month training every season, which is over 100 hours of theory and practice. The group is already almost full, and there are literally a few places left at the summer school. However, we already have a waiting list for students registering for the fall semester. 

If more such schools were opened, at a comfortable pace, people would be able to understand how everything is arranged and consciously approach the choice," says the project founder.

What are the participants' feedbacks?

Korzhenevska says that the course made it possible to create a real community of people who recharge each other.

"Recently, our student Valeriia wrote in our chat that she was going to the shooting range. Other students responded to her proposal. I am very happy that they have started to organize themselves. They go every Saturday to practice tactical medicine and CQB, and on Sundays, they fly drones with Skurenivskyi," Korzhenevska continues. "My favorite feedback came from our student Lida, who compared flying a drone to flying a broom in Harry Potter. She felt as if she had risen into the air for the first time — a state of pure magic," the project founder recalls.

Lidiia Tarovita compared flying a drone with flying a broom. Source: Instagram @zesyky934

The first group continues to fly drones and train independently, practicing the skills they learned at school. Korzhenevska says that the current students of Zesyky are, in fact, an almost ready-made model coordinated platoon, where people know how to communicate with each other and set the right priorities, where everyone is tolerant of each other's peculiarities and have managed to become friends.

What problems have the students encountered?

There are about 40 participants in the Zesyky chat, and approximately 25 students attended most of the classes. 

Some students only underwent the basic eight-hour tactical medicine course and then left. Others are really going to join the army, looking for brigades and thinking about their future plans.

"My pride and joy are the guys from Wood Reserve. That's what they call themselves because they train mostly with wooden dummies," Korzhenevska told Rubryka. These students already had a lot of self-learned material and tried not to miss their meetings for practical exercises every Saturday. They continue to learn to fly drones on Sundays and have completed all possible training at the school.

CQB classes. Photo: Veronika Nanovska

At the beginning of the school's founding, Korzhenevska selected participants purely based on motivation. It was enough for her to hear: "I'm not going to join the army, but I want to be ready." 

Among the challenges, the founder of Zesyky mentions unforeseen circumstances that can and often do affect classes. The school's instructors are military, so their plans change quickly: "Today you have a CQB instructor — a super-specialist scout, and tomorrow he will be stationed somewhere near Chasiv Yar, one of the hottest spots on the frontline." He is no longer a scout but the head of the UAV group. He only held a drone once in Zesyky at the school's lesson, but the war forced him to take up a new role.

It turns out that not only civilians study at the school, but also the military themselves manage to get a portion of useful knowledge. 

Why are they not expanding to other regions?

The school has already selected a full teaching staff with combat experience. This means that classes will be held according to the schedule on clearly defined days and times.

So far, Korzhenevska's military friends have bought all the equipment for the classes on their own cost, but the founder of Zesyky does not like this arrangement.

"Everything should be included in the price. My work and the work of the team should not be free either. I work for free only for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, collecting $38 to 50 thousand every month and helping more than 20 units, platoons, companies, battalions, or brigades in different directions of the front line. Therefore, the next Zesyky course will be 100% paid. I would like to be able to pay my teachers," Korzhenevska explains.

However, if the school graduates become military, they, too, will be able to turn to Korzhenevska for free help for their units or for themselves, explains the school's founder: "Because the military does not have to pay for anything. They pay the highest price."

People from different regions of Ukraine approached Korzhenevska, asking why Zesyky does not appear in other cities and regions. But today, the founder has no ambitions in this regard. She wants to do one thing locally, but to do it well and with high quality. She believes that this is better than creating a large network of schools.

How to support Zesyky school

• Support the information and spread the post and stories, or tell your friends personally.
• Donate to school. The money will be used for the purchase of training grenades, payment for the team's work, which has been working for free since the beginning of January, and purchasing other equipment and devices.
• Send drones for training. In particular, there is a great need for basic Mavik 3, blades and spare batteries for them.
• You can follow the news on the school's Instagram @zesyky934 and on Olesya Korzhenevska's personal pages on Facebook and Instagram.