By admin 
When the Russian aggression began, many Ukrainians and their businesses moved abroad. We at Technolex (Ukrainian translation agency) stayed. Later, when we attended language industry conferences in the EU, we often heard questions like:
“Are you really working in Ukraine? How is that possible?”
“Are you all going to leave once the borders open?”
Yes, we are working. And no, we are not going to leave.
To be honest, we didn’t believe the war would actually start. Just two weeks before the invasion, the top management of Technolex was attending a conference in the USA. We returned to our families and teams thinking it was just a bluff. One of our co-founders even had tickets to Dubai for February 26. But everything changed on February 24, and the borders were closed for men of military age. So, this story could have been very different if the war had started just a few days later.
The first days were filled with panic. People were moving en masse to places they considered safer, but we continued working. And we found meaning in it.
As a business, we could donate to our army and help refugees with language-related issues. We expected the volume of work to drop, but instead, we experienced the largest growth in our history, because all the military equipment supplied to Ukraine needed translation. We had to create new teams and build new processes for this type of content. Now we can proudly say that a large part of the manuals used by the Ukrainian army were translated by us.
There was one more challenge: Russia tried to destroy Ukraine’s power grid. Sometimes we had no electricity for half a day. Our solution? Large Li-ion batteries to keep us running through the day, a diesel generator just in case, and a Starlink terminal for a stable internet connection.
This made us a robust company, one that can continue delivering work even when others can’t. Now, we’re not afraid of the dark anymore. We can still deliver, with no excuses.
That’s the question many people ask after seeing videos of cities ruined by the Russian army. Unfortunately, those images are real. But Ukraine is a very large country, actually the biggest in Europe after Russia. It takes about 24 hours to cross it by car from east to west.
Most cities are far from the front lines, and life there is almost normal — with restaurants, traffic jams, and everyday routines. “Almost” means that sometimes Russian drones or missiles come. But statistically, the danger is more psychological than real.
For example, in Kyiv, ten times more people die in road accidents than from drone or missile attacks. And no one panics about that, many still don’t fasten their seatbelts. Street crime has even decreased since the war began. Statistically, Kyiv is actually safer than most large U.S. cities.
In short, we live normal lives, nothing like the black-and-white images from WWII chronicles. Work is part of that normal life, so the question “How can you even work there?” sounds rather absurd. What else should we do, dig our own graves instead? Of course not, we choose to keep living.
In fact, we feel a kind of inner strength when we see fear in the eyes of those asking this question. We even noticed that Ukrainians abroad often fear more than those who stayed.
As a company providing language services, with Ukrainian as our core specialization, we must stay close to the people who speak the language to maintain our competitive advantage. The language is changing, and only those who live within that change can keep their speech native and natural. We also need access to local linguists, which would be much harder from abroad.
We’re also thinking about the future. We’ve spoken to many foreign businesses eager to invest in Ukraine, they’re simply waiting for the fighting to end. Once investments begin, the demand for language services will surge. Being here, staying and observing, is strategically important.
Finally, we want to help our country, as taxpayers and as professionals. This is a shared struggle, and we want to be part of it.
We will have many stories to tell in the future.