On February 24, residents of a number of Ukrainian cities woke up to the sounds of explosions. Russia openly attacked Ukraine. A few hours later, one could see huge lines next to the military recruiting offices across the country with those wishing to join the territorial defense – a newly established military reserve component of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Executives of Ukraine’s tech industry are not simply watching from the sidelines while running their businesses. Many have also taken up arms to defend their country’s independence. Volodymyr Shevchyk, CEO of Indeema Software, is one of them. His company is focused on providing R&D services, development of complex IoT solutions, DevOps and AI (artificial intelligence) services. Instead, he grabbed a gun and joined a territorial defense battalion in Lviv. Volodymyr shares why he joined the defense forces, what it is like to be simultaneously a soldier and an entrepreneur, and more.
Life before and during the war
It was early morning of February 24, my son woke me up at 5 a.m. with the worst toothache, five minutes later huge explosions were reported near multiple cities in Ukraine. It was then that I decided I had to join the territorial defense forces, the country’s volunteer force that was organized to resist the Russian invasion.
SINCE I HAVE PEOPLE WHO DEPEND ON ME, I CANNOT JUST GO TO THE ARMY.
Sit by and doing nothing? I did that when the war with Russia began eight years ago, but now, as a full-scale war erupted, I knew I had to act. Although, as a tech leader, l can’t join the regular army, there are too many people that depend on me, I decided to join the country’s volunteer defense forces.
Joining the defense forces
It was hard to get into the military since I do not have a professional military education and training, instead I’d been studying programming until the age of 27, which is the current age cutoff for the army. However, I regularly went to a shooting club to practice my basic weapons skills.
When the Sykhiv district of Lviv created its own territorial defense, I became a fighter in this detachment. When you join the territorial defense forces, you need to learn different military occupation skills from handling various types of weapons, to combat tactics, to advanced individual training. After completing the training, I began to volunteer even more actively, because then I realized that our guys in the armed forces are not just soldiers, they are our heroes. We owe so much to them.
We were trained in combat tactics by professional military servicemen. The style, environments and fluidity of combat is very much like art. Just as it takes years to learn programming, so it takes a long time to become a professional soldier.
The commanders of the territorial defense detachment assign specific tasks to their teams, and officers can choose their own hours of patrolling on an individual basis. For example, you need to ensure that from 6:00 am to 10:00 am the areas are well covered at a particular checkpoint during a patrol. This allowed me to carry out patrol duties without delegating my CEO responsibilities.
Military service expands one’s worldview and mind, and brings you a better understanding of the world and people. Our team cooperates with effective law enforcement leadership, this helps you to understand their principle of work, in particular, communication with people.
When compared with men in civilian pursuits, those in the military are more aggressive, talk louder, even shouting, but they understood we were just civilians and treated us correspondingly with respect. I think this strategy can be applied also in the real world. Case in point to any tech company that treats you like an individual. The tech world is as specific as the military, and we can draw parallels for communication with new people who enter our field.
Pivoting to the new reality
Within days of the war unfolding, our world had changed – and we had to pivot. The decision was quickly made to embrace the continuity plan, install Starlink terminals purchased by Lviv IT Cluster, provide financial assistance to employees with children who relocate abroad, and step up measures to support employees who choose to stay in the country. Three of our employees joined the territorial defense forces. We also have team members who’re in the military reserve. We’re planning to continue to pay them salaries once they are mobilised.
Indeema has been supporting the army since Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan Revolution. We donated to Serhiy Prytula who introduced us to Taras Topola through whom we gained access to a producer of bulletproof vests, and since then we have been donating these vests to snipers in the armed forces.
A month before the full-scale war began, we started supplying one special unit with cameras, tablets, drones, and more. It is probably impossible to put an estimate on the financial value of Indeema’s assistance over the last eight years, but just in this ongoing February-March war alone we have contributed over 1 million Ukrainian hryvnia to the cause.
Indeema’s position is as follows: if we do not help the Armed Forces of Ukraine, soon we will all become refugees. Therefore, our priority is first to help the army, and secondarily to support humanitarian initiatives such as providing temporarily displaced people with bed linen, pillows and fresh food.
We are also committed to supporting refugees – we provided our office space for IT professionals who left Chernihiv, Mariupol, and other cities and towns for Lviv. A dozen of IT specialists relocated to Lviv from different regions of Ukraine and now work under one roof with us.
We are fortunate, we have continued as a company as much as possible considering the war and so far it has not affected our financial performance. We are in very close cooperation with customers, because we sell development entirely from the initial concept: we do the research, write specifications, make designs, develop architectures, and make plans.
I think after the victory we will all become more educated. We all used to live in our own little worlds, and now these worlds are very mixed. Therefore, our worldview will definitely expand.
I am also sure that the world has seen the reality and no one will confuse Ukraine with Russia anymore, and I expect that after the war we will have an economic boom. It will be another country.
