Sorry that I reply so late, I was on a tournament on a very beautiful castle in Hesse :-)
The order in which equipment should be acquired is: gambeson, helmet, gauntlets, cuisses and poleyns, vambraces and couters. With this equipment, you can already do light sparring. We use for this 90cm long sticks of ERTALON, a plastic material which is suited for this, cheap and easily available.
Then for taking part in tournaments: torso protection, spaulders (with this equipment, it's already possible to participate in many tournaments, and the risk of injury is not very high). rerebraces, and greaves.
What I said earlier about the craftsmen in Poland is also aplyable to those of Ukraine. I have very nice hardened steel arms which I bought from an ukrainian fighter in Warsaw. But apart from that I have no reasonable knowledge of ukrainian makers to advocate someone. There are surely some very good makers, and many more in Poland which I forgot or don't yet know of.
It would be great if you and your countrymen could put a team together for BoN.
But it is important to know that this is only one event of many. There are tournament in Germany France, Austria, Italy and of course in Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
Most of them are smaller but some like the tournament in Grunwald (Poland) is as big as Battle of the Nations.
By the way, a very nice tournament will be held in western France in the end of october (27-28.10.):
http://www.facebook.com/events/378628722175350/
A beautiful castle near the Loire... french food and drinks...
I think Jean Philippe may have contacted you already? It will be a good event to see some western european teams, maybe also some polish teams (which tend to sell some of their battle proven equipment after events).
It is very important to get some tournament experience if you want to be successful in fighting in big international tournaments like Battle of the Nations. That's why we in Germany e.g. are trying to establish many small tournaments and invite polish or russian fighters so they can beat us up and we can learn from them. another good way to learn (maybe even better) is to invite experienced eastern european fighters as an instructor for a weekend's workshop. You will have to pay for the travel and food, often this is enough to convince the more enthusiastical of them to visit you and plant the seed of knowledge in your country :-)
All on your own, it will be very difficult to find out how to train and how to fight in this way. We in western Europe have no tradition in fighting like that.
Best regards,
Till