A crowdfunding campaign in Slovakia to buy artillery shells for Ukraine has exceeded its target of €1m (£850m), less than 48 hours after it was launched.

The campaign is a response to the Slovak cabinet’s refusal to join an initiative by the Czech government to buy up hundreds of thousands of shells for the Ukrainian armed forces.

“We have to drive Putin out of Ukraine. We have to defeat him,” said Otto Simko, a Holocaust survivor and veteran of the 1944 Slovak National Uprising against the Nazis. Aged 99, he helped kickstart the campaign to challenge the government’s policy.

“I lived through the Second World War. I fought in it. I can tell you there was no point negotiating with Hitler and there is no point negotiating with Putin,” Simko, 99, told the BBC from Bratislava.

It was a random conversation the Slovak veteran had with a journalist and a philosopher that led to the idea of crowdfunding Slovak help for Kyiv.

In essence it allows Slovaks to bypass the populist-nationalist government of Robert Fico, who came to power in October pledging not to send “one more round of ammunition” to Ukraine.

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