Valeriya Ionan, a Ukraine’s deputy minister for Digital Transformation was breastfeeding her two-month-old son Mars when the first explosions swept over Kiev in the early hours of February 24. “I didn’t understand what was going on at first,” she says. The cold truth soon dawned: Russia invaded Ukraine.
Ionan, a 31-year-old MBA who previously worked in marketing, hastily called other leaders at Ukraine’s digital ministry. The department, staffed by tech-savvy millennials and led by Mykhailo Fedorov, a 31-year-old founder of a digital marketing startup, was created to digitize government services and boost Ukraine’s tech industry. Now it had to figure out what wartime digital bureaucrats have to offer.
The projects the ministry came up with have made it a linchpin in Ukraine’s fight against Russia — and the country’s widespread support among world leaders and tech CEOs. Within three days of the first missiles falling on Kiev, Federov and his staff launched a public campaign to pressure US tech giants to shut down Russia, began accepting cryptocurrency donations to support the Ukrainian military, secured access to Elon Musk’s Starlink Satellite Internet Service, and began recruiting a volunteer “IT army” to hack into Russian targets. More recent projects include a chatbot that allows citizens to submit images or videos of Russian troop movements. “We have restructured the Ministry of Digital Transformation into a clear military organization,” said Anton Melnyk, the department’s advisor.
Most of the companies that Fedorov publicly targeted, including Apple, Google and Facebook’s parent company Meta, have now shut down operations in Russia, restricted Russian government accounts or halted sales in the country. Apple, Google and Facebook did not respond to requests for comment. Crypto donations to Ukraine reached about $100 million last week, and Musk has shipped two batches of satellite Internet receivers to close connectivity gaps. The ministry’s pivot’s successes still leave a bigger question unanswered: Will these smart digital defense projects matter if Russian forces continue to advance?
Twitter content
This content can also be viewed on the site it arises from from.
Comedian-turned-politician Volodymyr Zelensky handed Fedorov the newly created Ministry for Digital Transformation in August 2019, shortly after the entrepreneur helped him win the presidential election with a slick digital campaign. Fedorov was tasked with delivering a vision for easy-to-use online government services that Zelensky called “the state in a smartphone.” “He [Fedorov] was this young technocrat, from the business side of the digital sector, and a lot of people were really skeptical,” Tanya Lokot, Associate Professor of Digital Media and Society at Dublin City University. “Many of the young officials Zelensky appointed didn’t have much experience with actual administration or sitting in government.” Fedorov has declined an interview request.
Fedorov, who is also Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, took advantage of the country’s thriving tech scene to staff his ministry. By hiring founders, marketers, social media experts and computer programmers, he created a branch unlike any other in the Ukrainian government. “There were no old people, and a lot of business people,” said Max Semenchuk, a blockchain entrepreneur who works as an advisor to the ministry.
Ministry staff, who sometimes wore matching hoodies while working in government offices in western Kiev, came to see themselves as a formidable unit of “freaks” in the government machine, said Mstyslav Banik, head of the e-services development department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. the Ministry. who has known Fedorov since they both worked in digital marketing. In a startup or large company, their obsession with speed and using the internet doesn’t seem surprising; within the government bureaucracy it was a revolution.
