With limited information coming from official sources, many people — particularly in tech — have been keeping track of the Russian invasion of Ukraine over Twitter.
Ukraine is home to thousands of startups and is a developer hub, and Ukrainian founders have had success overseas including with Grammarly and Revolut. Many startups with teams in the country are now trying to evacuate their staff.
Sifted has put together a list of Ukrainian startup and tech leaders who’ve been sharing their views and experiences on social media, from inside the country or further afield.
Here’s how Ukraine’s global tech community has been responding to the Russian invasion.
Oleksandra Zubal
Handle: @OleksandraZubal
Who? The cofounder of Lviv-based business management platform MyDone.
Mike Sapiton
Handle: @sapitonmix
Who? A tech journalist from Kyiv, working as Forbes Ukrain
e’s deputy editor-in-chief.
[embed]https://twitter.com/sapitonmix/status/1497091693371342850[/embed]
Natalia Tepluhina
Handle: @N_Tepluhina
Who: A Ukrainian-born engineer at Y Combinator-alumni SaaS startup GitLab — which IPO’d in the US last October at an $11bn valuation — now living in Amsterdam.
[embed]https://twitter.com/N_Tepluhina/status/1496720715147579393[/embed]
Dmytro Voloshyn
Handle: @dmytro_voloshyn
Who? The CTO and cofounder of Ukrainian edtech Preply. The startup raised its last round in March 2021, taking its total funding to $55.4m, and making it one of the country’s most valuable private, VC-backed tech companies.
[embed]https://twitter.com/dmytro_voloshyn/status/1496916765103865860[/embed]
Oleksandr Kosovan
Handle: @kosovan
Who? The Kyiv-based founder and CEO of MacBook-cleaning SaaS MacPaw. He also cofounded multi-stage Ukrainian VC Smrk.
[embed]https://twitter.com/kosovan/status/1496758397714239489[/embed]
Mykhailo Fedorov
Handle: @FedorovMykhailo
Who? The vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation of Ukraine. He’s been a vocal supporter of education as an important tool for raising the next generation of tech talent.
[embed]https://twitter.com/FedorovMykhailo/status/1496749831955664898[/embed]
Dmitriy Zaporozhets
Handle: @dzaporozhets
Who? The cofounder of Ukrainian-founded GitLab.
[embed]https://twitter.com/dzaporozhets/status/1496943590139830272[/embed]
Sergey Petrenko
Handle: @gray_ru
Who? A serial entrepreneur who founded Ukrainian coworking space Terminal 42 and hosts tech podcast Radio-T, based in Odessa.
Taras Mishchenko
Handle: @tarasmi
Who? Founder and editor-in-chief at Ukrainian-language online tech publication Mezha Media, based in Kyiv.
[embed]https://twitter.com/tarasmi/status/1497250594851065856[/embed]
Pavlo Krasnomovets
Handle: @krasnomovets
Who? A Kyiv-based editor at Forbes Ukraine, covering all things tech and startup in the country.
Anton Melnyk
Handle: @antonmelnyk
Who? An adviser at the Ministry of Digital Transformation in Ukraine, who’s previously held roles at Kyiv-based startup incubator UUI Ventures and the Ukrainian startup fund.
Oleg Kurchenko
Handle: @Oleg__Kurchenko
Who? A Ukrainian-born entrepreneur and investor, who founded Kyiv-based IT company YouDigital and digital asset exchange Binaryx.
[embed]https://twitter.com/Oleg__Kurchenko/status/1497076946794328064[/embed]
Artur Orujaliev
Handle: @arturclancy
Who? A Kyiv-based entrepreneur who founded remote jobs board Reworker.net and online blockchain and crypto media publication Biteside.
Andrii Degeler
Handle: @adegeler
Who? A Ukrainian tech journalist living in Groningen, who ventured back to his family home in Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine to help his mum move further west.
[embed]https://twitter.com/adegeler/status/1497142989562523672[/embed]
Denys Zhadanov
Handle: @DenZhadanov
Who? A board member of Ukrainian-founded bootstrapped SaaS startup Readdle, based in San Francisco, London and Odessa — in the south of Ukraine.
[embed]https://twitter.com/DenZhadanov/status/1496668885755613186[/embed]
Max Lytvyn
Handle: @max_lytvyn
Who? The cofounder and head of revenue at $13bn Ukrainian-founded SaaS startup Grammarly. The company is now based in San Francisco but still has an office in Kyiv.
Vlad Yatsenko
Handle: @vyatsenko
Who? The CTO and cofounder of UK fintech Revolut, which hit a valuation of $33bn over the summer after an $800m raise from SoftBank and Tiger Global.
[embed]https://twitter.com/vyatsenko/status/1496781263415480322[/embed]
Illia Polosukhin
Handle: @ilblackdragon
Who? The Ukrainian-born cofounder of US blockchain platform Near Protocol that’s gotten backing from US VC Andreessen Horowitz. Polosukhin studied in Kharkiv before moving to San Francisco in 2008.
[embed]https://twitter.com/ilblackdragon/status/1496776476062007299[/embed]
