Since February 2025, an informal network has been established in Europe to provide the Ukrainian army with protective nets against Russian drones. Independent volunteers and non-profit organizations in France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Ukraine are working together to collect second-hand fishing nets and hail nets used to protect crops. The nets are shipped to Ukraine, where they are distributed to soldiers. We take a closer look at this continental network that is directly helping to save lives on the front lines.
Franck Labourey, an independent volunteer committed to the Ukrainian cause since 2014, has uncommon energy. Since the launch of the large-scale Russian offensive in 2022, Franck has been tirelessly collecting vehicles and material aid for Ukrainian soldiers and civilians in various European countries in order to deliver them to Ukraine. a time-consuming activity that the 65-year-old from Doubs in eastern France does alongside his job as a chimney sweep in Switzerland, where he now lives.
“I’m on my 47th trip [Editor’s note: since 2022],” says Franck, who sometimes allows himself the luxury of taking a day off so that he can cover the 4,600 km (at least) of round trips he makes during his weekends in three days (instead of two). Since 2022, he has used these days off almost exclusively for this purpose, to the detriment of his social life, he says.
Yacht races and kamikaze drones
“I’ve always lived with pressure,” says Franck, who was also a professional horse rider for nearly ten years, before adding that he has always had “two or three jobs” at the same time and that inactivity, even for a single day, gives him headaches. Sometimes, however, doing nothing can be a lifesaver. It was precisely on one of these rare days off that Franck took in February that he brought us back to our subject. “I was watching a documentary about the Vendée Globe yachting race. I was on the sofa, they were showing the preparations, and then I saw some nets.” He then realized how useful fishing nets could be for Ukrainian soldiers on a front line swarming with kamikaze drones.
Franck contacted another volunteer living in Les Sables-d’Olonne, Luc Jézéquel, and shared his idea with him. Quickly, the Breton retiree, 77, who devotes his retirement to the Ukrainian cause and first aid, managed to identify several tons of used fishing nets on the Vendée coast. With the help of Parisian association Safe and the fishers of the coastal town, the first two truckloads were shipped to Ukraine in April 2025. “You should have seen their joy when the trucks were loaded!” Luc says about the fishers.
Following these first deliveries, Franck continues, “the guy who recycles the fishing nets said to us, ‘Would you be interested in hail nets? I offered them to the military, but they said, ‘No, no, they’re useless.’ […] They just wanted them to make camouflage nets.” Despite this response, Franck considered his intuition promising. “I said, ‘You never know,’ and sent some anyway. They thought they were good, and now all the units [are asking for them]. I get requests every day!” he continues, delighted with this success.
The Angels network
In his fight against Russian drones, Franck is far from alone. Although he has so far refused to set up his own association, he is nevertheless aware of the need to work together to achieve tangible results on the ground. This is the raison d’être of the WhatsApp group Les Anges de la route pour l’Ukraine (Angels of the Road for Ukraine), which he created more than three years ago, initially at the request of people who wanted to follow his work. The discussion now involves around 100 volunteers, either independent like him or members of associations, and has taken on an operational dimension. “It’s a group of ideas. Everyone contributes ideas, and there are a lot of synergies [because the main idea is that] any help, no matter how small, is welcome,” Franck emphasizes.
Among the members of Les Anges de la Route, he points out, is Daniel Federspiel, chairman of the Besançon-based association Les Convois solidaires, which oversees part of the collection of second-hand nets in France, as well as the organization and financing of their export to Ukraine. The world of volunteers is a small village: the two men met during a commemorative event organized by Les Convois solidaires and Le Souvenir français in the Doubs, marking the third anniversary of the large-scale invasion and honoring seven Ukrainians who died for France alongside the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) in 1945.
“I didn’t have the money, we needed an association to raise donations,” summarizes Franck, while the members of the Besançon organization, founded in March 2022 to help Ukrainians, are used for financial and logistical challenges, with, according to Daniel, more than 350 tons of aid sent to Ukraine since its creation, worth around three million euros.
Regulatory headache
“The solidarity convoys for anti-drone nets serve as administrative support,” explains Daniel, 61, a quality control manager at a company in the Franche-Comté region in eastern France. “We work with a company that collects and recycles industrial waste, which gives us an order form that allows us to remove [the nets].” So far, the process seems simple, but the task is actually more complex.
This is because, according to the chairman of Convois, the nets collected are generally classified as industrial waste, which means that their export outside the European Union is subject to particularly strict legislation aimed at preventing trafficking and damage to the environment. The cargo, transported by truck, must be weighed several times during its journey, while transport companies must fill out a multitude of documents.
“It’s our name that appears on all the purchase orders […], on all the customs declarations to cross into Ukraine, and on all the waste tracking slips,” says Daniel, emphasizing that the slightest discrepancy results in significant legal headaches for the donor companies, without which the volunteers’ aid would only be possible on a much smaller scale.
For volunteers, who are often unfamiliar with these regulatory issues, the challenge is not easy. But unity, as they say, is strength. In this project, the French can count on the essential help of Alla, Nadiya, Nataliya, Liana, and Oksana.
The five Ukrainian women are responsible for raising funds (including in Ukraine), negotiating prices with transport companies, and receiving the nets in Ukraine through non-profit organizations. Finally, they ensure that the nets are delivered free of charge to the Ukrainian military.
Alla lives in Germany, Nadiya and Liana in Ukraine, Nataliya in France, and Oksana in the Netherlands. The five only know each other through social media, where they met while working on projects to support Ukrainian civilians and soldiers. “I say it’s the war that brought us together. Unfortunately, that’s how it is, but I think war binds us together,” sums up Nataliya, who has been living in France for 17 years and who, in 2022, gave up her job as a real estate agent on the French Riviera to support her country as a full-time volunteer from her village in the Nice hinterland.
A well-oiled Euro-Ukrainian logistics operation
“You could say that my role is to link two countries, the French association that donates the nets and the Ukrainian association that receives them […]. What I do isn’t huge, but the most important thing is that I’m in direct contact with the soldiers. So I know what they need, etc.” About six months ago, she continues. She is also a member of the group Les Anges de la route pour l’Ukraine. “We were looking for nets. In fact, it was through word of mouth that I got in touch with Franck, Daniel, and the others. In January, Franck and I started talking a lot about all these nets, the problem of shipping them, etc. And […] in April, the first truck left.”
Since then, Nataliya says, with the help of Convois solidaires, Safe, members of Les Anges de la route, and other independent volunteers, dozens of trucks loaded with nets have been sent to Ukraine – about 400 tons of goods. As a rule, she explains, the shipments are sent to Zaporizhzhia or Lviv. Ukrainian partner associations deliver the bales of nets directly to the military or send them via a private transport company with legendary efficiency in Ukraine – Nova Pochta (New Post) – which allows associations and individuals to ship goods intended for the army or humanitarian aid across the country free of charge.
However, this efficient organization is a victim of its own success, says Nataliya, who also chairs the association Agir et Soutenir l’Ukraine (Act and Support Ukraine), which she founded in 2023 to help Ukrainian children. Information goes around quickly within the units, and requests have skyrocketed to the point that shipments are usually booked before they are even loaded. “The soldiers tell us that these nets are worth their weight in gold!” she says with energy tinged with sadness.
In France, nets that are not collected are destroyed
In fact, demand now exceeds the volunteers’ ability to finance the transport of the precious cargo, which is otherwise destined for destruction if not collected. Even more problematic, according to a witness who wishes to remain anonymous, is that sometimes a stock of nets is destroyed even after the money needed to transport them to Ukraine has been raised. Ukraine is not part of the EU or the Schengen area. As a result, border controls on Ukrainian transport companies are extremely strict and have become even stricter since the start of the large-scale invasion. Crossing the border can take hours or even days, and trucks supposed to collect cargo in France sometimes arrive two or three days late.
“I understand that in terms of organization, it means more work for the waste disposal center,” admits our source. “But on our side, the volunteers work for free, 24 hours a day.Like mysemf, I’ve been working 24 hours a day, seven days a week for four years, always on my phone, for free. Maybe I can be a bit blunt with employees who work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.: they don’t want to know anything, at lunchtime they want to go and eat, they don’t want to know that in Ukraine people are waiting for nets to save lives.”
Such a situation, which could be resolved at little cost (sending a 20-ton truck to Ukraine costs around €3,800), is perhaps worth discussing, both in France and at EU level. This is the fight that Luc – Franck’s contact in Les Sables-d’Olonne, also a member of Les Anges de la Route – has taken up. With the support of Finistère MP Liliana Tanguy, he plans to meet with the chairman of the France-Ukraine friendship group in the National Assembly, Gabriel Attal, during a visit he is due to make to Brittany in August. The volunteer hopes to raise awareness among politicians on the issues surrounding the shipment of fishing nets and hail nets to Ukraine, in order to reach a solution that is acceptable to volunteers and recycling companies.
These issues are not only military in nature. Nataliya recalls that a few months ago, a shipment was sent to Kherson at the request of the administration of this city in southern Ukraine located on the front line. As reported by Courrier international, Russian drone pilots are engaged in a veritable “human safari,” targeting both civilians and military personnel. The situation has also been described by various organizations, including NGO Human Rights Watch.
In Ukraine, the nets are proving their worth
The bitterness surrounding the destruction of nets that are not recovered is proportional to the enthusiasm with which shipments of the equipment are received in Ukraine. To understand this, we need to take a detour behind the front lines. It is there, in a cantonment town in the Kharkiv region, where the other witnesses in this report were interviewed by telephone, that we meet Major Fritz (who owes his pseudonym to his birth in Germany) and intelligence officer Tarik (also a pseudonym). Both are volunteers in the 3rd Assault Brigade, one of the Ukrainian army’s elite units. Thanks to the work of volunteers, their unit was able to receive a trailer of hail nets, amounting to around 20 tons of the precious equipment – enough to cover the equivalent of 40 hectares.
The nets, the two brothers in arms say in English, have been used successfully on the front line for about eight months. The principle is simple. Often undetectable by kamikaze drone cameras, the nets trap the drones. The drone’s propellers become entangled in the mesh, immobilizing it before it hits its target, which prevents the explosive charge it is carrying from detonating. Stretched across the entrances to shelters, above trenches, or between trees, they provide vital protection for combatants deployed on the front lines.
The nets also enable Ukrainians to protect strategic supply routes. Thanks to the ongoing work of specialized teams, they are placed on cables stretched between wooden posts on either side of the roads over about 20 kilometers. This distance corresponds to the maximum range of most kamikaze drones, including fiber-optic-guided models, which are secure against jamming and are particularly used to target logistics routes.
“They send the drones to track our vehicles, anything used to transport soldiers, ammunition, supplies in general, and the wounded,” says Tarik, adding that drones are a constant threat to armies on both sides and that Russian soldiers also use nets to protect themselves.
Drones, the number one threat
According to Fritz, 35, a former sports shop manager in Zaporizhzhia whose first military engagement for the Ukrainian cause dates back to 2014, drones, particularly kamikaze drones, have become the main threat to Ukrainian soldiers. “Our guys can’t see them all. They have to constantly hide from them.” Given the danger these cheap weapons pose to infantry, artillery, and aviation, firearms, he adds, “have become like toys in this war.”
“At the beginning of the war, drones were rarely used. Now they fly constantly: rain or shine, night or day. You see, it’s like mosquitoes in a forest, it’s like a constant ‘bzzzzz’. That’s what you hear on the front line. All the time, 24/7,” continues Tarik, 40, a former IT developer in the United Arab Emirates. “When [Russian soldiers] spot someone in a shelter or a trench, they throw everything they’ve got at them. It could be five or ten drones of different types,” he explains. “That’s why we’re trying new approaches, like these nets.” Drones are now too numerous to be shot down and too sophisticated to be jammed.
Every life saved is a victory
In this ongoing battle between armor and sword, Ukraine and Russia are not fighting on equal terms. “We are competing with an oil power,” Tarik reminds us. “They have enough resources, enough money to cover the whole country – Russia – with these nets. We use what is provided by volunteers and the government […]. So we are holding our own in this competition, but only time will tell what will happen.”
Given Russia’s resources, the supply of protective nets provided by volunteers is therefore greatly appreciated because this support helps, in relative terms, to make up for the Ukrainian state’s lack of resources and its infamous administrative red tape. On the ground, this is paid for in lives lost and injuries sustained due to the endless delays in the delivery of equipment ordered by army units when they have to go through official channels.
The shipments from Europe, the two men point out, will certainly not win the war, “but it’s something that helps us save lives, says Tarik. If you ask me, ‘Is it useful, does it help us?’, I would say that it is 100% useful. When we can save even one life, it’s already a victory, it’s already an achievement.”
To help fund the next shipments of recycled nets for Ukrainian combatants and civilians, visit the online fundraiser organized by Convois solidaires (donations are tax-deductible in France).
Antoine Laurent is a freelance journalist. A contributor to the Swiss bimonthly Echo Magazine, the Italian media Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa, and other publications on a more ad hoc basis (Le Courrier de Genève, Linkiesta, etc.).