Dr Victoria Itskovych

Caitlin Morrissey 

In your mind, what is the DNA of Kyiv?

Victoria Itskovych

That's a great question, really. For you to understand, I'm not a historian or geographical person. I'm just a citizen of Kyiv. I live here, I was born here and I lived here for the whole of my life. So I don't want to say something about the history. Of course, it's everywhere here. This is a historical city, obviously, and its history is like it's one of the most ancient cities here in the, I don't know the capital of the Kyivan Rus and it survived the Soviet Union era. But for me personally, the Kyiv is about freedom. I went to a lot of cities abroad, and of course, probably because I'm original from here but I feel because of the unique situation that is in Kyiv, that is from one side it is a European city with European values. On the other side, we still have this, you know, somehow Soviet Union or probably not so strict European background. This is about freedom for me. And I feel that people that come to Kyiv, they all also feel this freedom. And the result of this freedom is the situation which we are now in, yes? Because if we were not looking for this freedom, we were the, I don't know, the region of Russia or something, yes, everything that happened. It's not about Kyiv only, it's about the whole Ukraine. Ukrainians are striving for freedom. But Kyiv is the heart of Ukraine, and everything what happened around Ukraine in modern history happened in Kyiv. For example, the Revolution of Dignity, I personally took part in this. For me, it's a great example of free people that made their choice, you know, by the Revolution, but it was not the war, and it was not the Civil War, it was just a revolution. So the freedom, for me, is the main, the main part of the DNA of Kyiv.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Thank you for explaining that and also for situating that in some of the context around Kyiv's geography and the geopolitics of the region. And just continuing on there, in your mind, what makes Kyiv, Kyiv? And how many different Kyivs are there? Is there one, or are there many? And what might the sort of dividing lines be? They might not be physical.

Victoria Itskovych

Interesting thing that we call Kyivans, all the people that live in Kyiv, not the people that were born in Kyiv, and we never, really, never divide people by how many years have you lived in Kyiv? Have you come here from for like10 years ago or five years ago or just a year ago? I mean, this is the unique situation because usually, for every city you're okay, you were originally from here or not? But this is a capital. The majority people here were not born here. But we call Kyivans a person that just came, for example, a month ago but he lives here or have chosen the city to live here, probably not for the eternity, but for some time. They are all Kyians. Of course, we have, like a historical Kyiv, also Kyiv as the capital this defined that we have here everything: the embassies, the Central Government, and everything what is going on is happened in Kyiv. Kyiv is the main target for Russians now, and this is obvious and of course, Kyiv is protected as much as it can be protected.

But the recent what happened in July 2024 was Okhmatdyt Hospital, for example, it shows that this is the giant target. Kyiv is a really great cultural city. Kyiv is a big, I would say, restaurant or leisure or entertainment city. If you have ever been or have chance to visit Kyiv and had the chance to eat in our restaurant, for me, not only for me, for everybody who comes here, we have like the best service ever, the best restaurants ever, even in the situation that we are living now everything is open. The restaurants were open like, I don't know, two/three months from the start of the invasion? Every everything reopened again. So for me, the entertainment and restaurant culture in Kyiv is a big, big part of what Kyiv is, especially for the outcomers, the people that are tourists, the people who come visit Kyiv. Because when people come to any city, probably they don't go to historical church. The first thing they go to the restaurant and the service is great here. So we have underground culture, big underground culture that is really here, the graffiti artist, for example. And we are now thinking, now I'm talking already as a Kyiv representative. We are thinking how to work with them so their culture will be-- their artistry will be also represented on Kyiv city streets, but like officially represented. So Kyiv is about everything, the history, old ancient history, Soviet Union history, and this is also our history. So I don't want to cancel the Soviet Union history, you know. So about everything of this.

Caitlin Morrissey 

And there's a follow up there to something that you said right at the beginning, which is that everybody who lives in Kyiv is a Kyivan. And we, Greg and I, are from London, and we have a similar thing, that everybody who comes to London is a Londoner. You can feel like you've stepped off the plane at Heathrow, and you feel like you're a Londoner. But in Kyiv, what does it mean to be a Kyivan, is there a way to sort of characterise that in terms of, is there a common thing? What unites the Kyivans?

Victoria Itskovych

I want to like refer back. There is a concept, you know, of distributed autonomous organisation. And when Russians started to attack Ukraine, as they kept saying, that we will attack the centres of decision-making, this and that. And you can't do this with Ukraine because in Ukraine, the centre of decision is in every Ukrainian and in every Kyivan because we are distributed autonomous organisation.

So this unites Kyiv, and this unites Ukraine that we of course, as the post-Soviet Union country, there's still a lot of in our heads, like somebody will decide for us what to do. But in the time of crisis, each Ukrainian and each Kyivan, like, wakes up and understand that it is his time to make the decision. That's why we can't be conquered. Because you know, we will, like, regroup and do something else. We won't wait for the President to tell us what to do. We will do the same. I can make the example when the invasion started, and of course, everybody were shocked, despite the fact that there are a lot of something in the news, like there will be an invasion but you never believe this if you are not, like, 100% sure. And we have never had some directions from the country or government or management, what to really do. Just like in an hour after invasion, I was in my data centre. My team was in data centre and we were like small mice doing something, just doing something, doing something. What you can do in this situation? So I think this unites Kyivans.

For me, I don't have any requirements for the Kyivan. I don't think the Kyivan should be ‘this and this’. I would wish for Kyivans to be more in the democratic processes, yes, on the local, municipal level but I understand that not all people are interested in this. But for me, the more you are interested in what is going on in your city or around you, the more you are from this city.

Greg Clark 

Victoria, I just want to follow up with what you've just said, which is really, really interesting. So this idea of distributed autonomous organisation. Firstly, I suppose one question is, does this approach have any roots in history? We can imagine, of course, it is a response to violence and attack from outside to become distributed and autonomous, is to become more flexible, more resilient, more sustainable. I understand that. But is there any historical route? That's my first question that you know about. And then the second question is really about technology because this is your job, if you're going to be distributed and autonomous technology becomes very important to you, I suppose. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that. But firstly, is there a historical aspect to this? Did Kyiv or did Ukrainians emerge as small families who gradually became knitted together in this distributed autonomy life? Tell us about that.

Victoria Itskovych

Yeah, absolutely. The example I know from the history, so Ukraine in the ancient history, Ukraine have never had like a central government. Ukraine was constructed, if we're-- because in ancient history, the government was connected with war always, yes. So we had this like warrior organisations, the warriors were called Cossacks and we had this different organisation that is called Sich. Sich was a place like a group of Cossacks. They lived there and they, like, made war with somebody if it was needed. But this was something like a government. But this was distributed because we had different organisation - like different Sichs - a couple of them around Ukraine. They were distributed and each of this was autonomous. So there were no central government for like everyday life. Only in the time of war, there was a specific person that was called Hetman. This specific person, his goal was to connect all these Cossacks groups and take them and, for example, protect the country, or protect some specific regions. So probably every Ukrainian thinks about it somewhere in their head that for your everyday life, you don't need this government, yes?

Of course, it's not so true in our modern times because you have a lot of centralised. But again, why we have so many things centralised? Because of the Soviet Union. So when we are talking now about the problems that we're having in energy sector, yeah, we have blackouts but these blackouts are the result of the structure of our energy systems that is absolutely centralised by the Soviet example. So if, for example, Ukraine would develop, you know, naturally and decentralised then we would have, like I don't know, thousand small power station and not like five nuclear stations and, I don't know, five hydro stations. But we would have, like, thousands of small and we would be naturally decentralised.

Greg Clark 

I just want to check something with you. My understanding from my reading of Cossack history is that indeed, Cossack culture was this idea of a kind of latent network of cells that were semi-autonomous groups of people who shared a common culture, a Cossack culture, which meant that when required, they could aggregate their effort and become a very big army, but most of the time they didn't, and they just lived in separate units of community. Are you saying that this Cossack culture, or Cossack form of cellular organisation with aggregation capabilities, that that in a way, is part of the history of how, in a sense, Ukraine in particular, and Kyiv more precisely, works? Is that right?

Victoria Itskovych

Absolutely, absolutely. That what I meant by distributed autonomous organisation. So I just recall back to the Revolution of Dignity. If somebody, you know, the Russian propaganda kept telling that everybody who is on Maidan, they were paid money for-- I mean, of course, it's bullshit. But I witnessed, you know, there is like a living organism of people and they keep organising by themselves. For example, I was doing Molotov cocktails. So it was not somebody-- nobody was hurt. It's just for, I don't know, for the compliance reason. It's not somebody assigned me to do this, yes? But I just went there and organised the like, the process and somebody took another process because he was better in that or this process and made it organised. So we don't, we as Ukrainians, we don't like to fight, really. We like to have leisure. I mean, as a people, we don't like to go and wait somebody but if it happens, then we are organised and try to fight.

Greg Clark 

So this is very, very helpful. I have one more question. So your role is specifically in technology. In fact, you're the Chief of IT for the City of Kyiv. So firstly, is there a high use of technology amongst the Ukrainian population and the Kyiv population relative to other countries and cities in the regions? And secondly, does that relate to this whole idea of being distributed, autonomous, but also connected? Tell us about technology.

Victoria Itskovych

For the first part of your question, it's super high use of technology on the level of in Kyiv and in Ukraine as a whole. Of course, this is probably heard about some of our pieces of technology, like the D-application and all the electronic passports on the national level. I mean, it's somehow connected with, you know, when you come to all the old European country-- for what I mean by ‘old’ that was was rich like long time ago, yes? That had no crisis. Then you usually can face something like some people or some regions, they don't use the 3D-secure on the card. You can, like, use only magnetic card because there is some latency in the technology. Or, like in the USA, people still use the chequebooks. In Ukraine and in Kyiv, definitely, because we have this, like the Soviet iron wall, we had no access to the technology. So when this wall was like broken, all the newest technology came to us.

We have, like, the cheapest, cheapest mobile internet connection in the whole Europe, definitely. And it's cheapest, not from the absolute perspective but from the possibility for person to pay for it. I mean, it's the cheapest, really. We have one of the cheapest internet connection because, for example, for the internet because we don't have-- in Ukraine, we didn't have before the internet, now we are having, like, phone, yes, optic networks around all Ukraine. So the internet is really very accessible. I mean, of course it was before the war because now we are having blackouts, and this is a giant problem for the connection, for the internet providers and landline providers, etc. The rate of adoption of technology is really high. I mean, we made the polling and we may always make the surveys especially among the elderly people about how they use the technology because we are responsible for the new services to launch. And of course, we don't want these services to be exclusive, so to exclude some categories of people because usually when we launch some service in our city app, somebody asks how the elderly woman will use the service. And firstly, we were worried about this and because of this, we also try to launch some offline points to get the service. But really, we found out that is not a problem in Kyiv, especially, every elder person now has a smartphone. The smartphones are cheap. They absolutely understand how to work with them, I mean, to call FaceTime and to use applications. The only reason they come to the physical point of service is the socialisation, yes? So this is another problem that we are having in Kyiv. We have too few places for elderly people to socialise and to spend their time. But this problem should be solved by another way then, to put some words, offline points of services.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Thank you so much, Victoria. How Kyiv is different to other Ukrainian cities?

Victoria Itskovych

It's a capital, obviously. So as any capital, it has a concentration of everything, the concentration of good things and the concentration of problems from the other side, obviously. So I would say that we have like Kyiv is, from the perspective of that Kyiv is a capital, it's like two cities. So from one side, it's like a process-- it's like a national capital with all the ministries and everything. And another is just a city that people live in. So I understand why some countries put their capital away, you know, build another city and put their capital there because Kyiv has a lot of traffic. I don't say-- not only the transport traffic, but in general, too much traffic because it is the capital. And we have, obviously, some political things to resolve because a city is a city, the national government is a national government. So this thing should be divided. I mean, just a example from now, sorry, I'm again going back to the blackouts and everything, but it is really the example that we are now having in Ukraine blackouts. These blackouts are really controlled. So sometimes, of course, something is hit, and then we have the emergency blackout, but usually, they are controlled, so everybody knows the time that the electricity will be shut off. And these blackouts are-- so every region in Kyiv has its own limits, and these limits are were designed like to be the same, to be equal for each region. So in each region, for example, people in their households will have electricity for like eight hours or sixteen hours, yes? And for Kyiv, as Kyiv is a region administratively, Kyiv has the same limits as any other region. However, in Kyiv, we have all this central government, and this central government is a critical infrastructure, so they don't, they never shut out. And because they take the big part of this limit to themselves, the Kyiv households are in worse position than in any other city in Ukraine. So this is like a part of the influence of what Kyiv is because it's centred. But of course, on the other side, everything-- I mean, not the best, because we have great universities in Lviv, in Kharkiv, in many other cities, but the biggest amount of people, universities, culture, everything is happening in Kyiv.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Thank you. Over time, Kyiv has been sort of a coveted prize for different powers seeking to be based in the city or from the city. What is it about Kyiv, from your point of view that makes it a city that other powers want to claim? What is it about Kyiv? It reminds me of Istanbul in that way, and I know that historically, that they've had connections. But what is it about Kyiv that makes it a coveted prize from the outside world?

Victoria Itskovych

The history, obviously, yes? I mean not the old buildings but the place itself. You know, this is the super history. Like who owns the city, who owns Kyiv, who owns the whole region, from historical perspective? People, of course. We have, like, now less, of course, just before the war. But now we have, like, more than three million people in Kyiv again. So it's a big city. I would not say the factories because the majority of the factories were on the east of Ukraine that were obviously, that was invaded, obviously and the majority of them were ruined. So it's like people, people, the main thing is people.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Just coming now onto some of the questions here that are about Kyiv's most world-changing inventions, innovations and discoveries. Perhaps there’s technological innovations and discoveries that you might wish to talk about, or they can be from any sort of realm, culinary, entertainment, any sort of inventions and discoveries. But what has Kyiv innovated or discovered that has been world changing or globally influential?

Victoria Itskovych

Usually, you know, you can say about the discoveries that made by Kyiv and people. Yes, for example, Sikorsky invented helicopter or there was like, I don't know, architecture or something. From the modern discoveries, the technology in Kyiv as a whole for big cybersecurity companies. Kyiv and Ukraine is the home for big digital companies and digital inventions. Here in Kyiv, sorry for talking about what I'm doing and not like old inventions. The things that we are proud about is a Kyiv digital app. It's the application that we launched in Kyiv, and now it has three million users. It's almost all adult population of Kyiv city. And this application is before the war, it was like electronic ticket, transport application, parking application, etc. When the invasion started, we in a day, we transformed this application into a life-saving application. So we start from the air raid alerts. Because, just for you to understand now, of course, we have like the sirens around the city, and when air raid alert comes, you will hear it. But when this system of sirens, it was all Soviet Union system. So it was like, not refurbished. Didn't work. Not more than-- on the start of the war, not more than 30% of Kyiv area was covered by the sound, yes? And the Kyiv digital app was the only thing you can use to know that there is an air raid alert. And after that, they all clear and everything.

Then, when there were no information about what is going on in Kyiv, this was the only channel of like communication with Kyivans and where everything was closed, the pharmacy was closed, or some shops with food were closed. It was the only means to understand that the map with pharmacy or the map where you can get the water, etc. It again, was done like on your laps in the shelter, with the developers and people that left here. So it's hard to answer your question about the inventions because I think everybody can like, read something in Wikipedia, but when you like, when the war started, a lot are wiped off you know? You can't compare. What we were having now, the inventions that we are having now, they seem to be more valuable than the inventions that were before. But of course, everything will change after the war. Everything will change again.

Caitlin Morrissey 

It's incredible to think about the sort of conditions and the speed at which that innovation happened to produce that app that has provided so much information to everybody in real time about what's happening in the city. It's really incredible. There's also a question here in terms of the leaders have shaped Kyiv. And again, there's an invitation here for you to speak about leaders from any realm who you feel have shaped the character of the city.

Victoria Itskovych

It's again for ancient time, it can be the Yaroslav the Wise. For modern time, it's definitely the Mayor of Kyiv that shaped the face of Kyiv for now, Vitali Klitschko. I'm saying it not only because he's my boss because you know, I was a fan of him just a long years before and the things he did and how he supported for everything innovative that is going on in Kyiv. So he's a big supporter of what is been here and he brings a lot of attention to Kyiv that is very important now. And he brings a lot of the nations and everything to Kyiv. But the most valuable thing for us on our war arena now, it's attention. So nobody should forget about what is going on here. So he brings a lot of attention. Of course, we have here from Kyiv, a lot of sports people that-- I mean, I don't want to distinguish somebody specific because there are a lot of people is, you know, that is around Kyiv that are important for Kyiv history.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Thank you. And yeah, thank you for also speaking about the mayor. And in terms of his leadership in the last few years and over the next few years, what you mentioned there that his support for innovation was really critical for enabling all of the work that you've done, but in what other ways, is it possible to characterise his leadership under these conditions and of the city at this time?

Victoria Itskovych

He was here like the day one. He was here 24 hours. You mean, he is a person of doing something and by himself, a great sportsman. So he understand how to fight, yes? So he understand what fight means. He understand the value of quick decisions. So what I remember from the first days of the war that he was here and he made quick decisions. He made, like 24 hours, he made any support for the warriors, for the Army, for the like the city vertical that was needed, he made it. And this characterised the person very much because, you know, there was a month that, like the March/April, there was like 700,000 people left in Kyiv. I mean, comparably to four, five million before the war it was like an empty city. But he standed here and he gathered around himself the people that really, really ready to act.

Again, it's something about distributed, autonomous organisation, yes? Because, you know, you don't have the protocol for the war. You would like to have it. It would be great to have it. Usually, I mean, I'm from IT, we have this disaster recovery plan, business continuity plan for every system, but we never had the plan for the missile ruining our data centre because it's not about the disaster recovery, it's like a complete disaster. My advice to any city is when building your disaster recovery plan is to think about the worst. What I mean by the worst? We had the COVID, yes, you recall the COVID? I mean, we completely forgot about COVID now, but we had a COVID before, and we saw that COVID is like the worst things that can happen with the world. Now we have the war here, and it's the worst thing. What we will have next? I don't know! Alien invasion, probably. I'm just joking but you know, you never know what can happen. So you should have like, when building your disaster recovery plan, you should like imaginary just for the joke but think about like the worst scenarios that can happen. And you will never have like the complete plan. But try to think just okay, the worst scenario can happen, what will be step one, two and three? That's all because when something happens, it's hard to think. It's better to do something if you already have a plan. If not, then you will have to think and regroup.

Greg Clark 

If we imagine a time beyond the Russian invasion, when Ukraine has been victorious and Kyiv is free again, how will this period have changed Kyiv? How will Kyiv be different in the future as a result of this incredible shock, but also as a result of this great social heroics?

Victoria Itskovych

It's a great question, really. Partly I answered it in my previous talk about the alien invasion and everything. We will come much more resilient from this war. Because when we were talking with you about everything, how people of Ukraine are regrouping but frankly speaking, we are not used to such a long period of resilience. We tend to, you know, group, fight quickly and then step back, go away and again, make our own work to do, yes? And this is like, more than like, you know, a big amount of years, yes? So almost three years we have war and everything. So we are not used to such a long, long resiliency. So this will be definitely a giant trauma to each Ukrainian and each person from Kyiv.

We will come stronger from this. I hope that we will come smarter from this. And I hope we, each and everyone, will learn to think up front. Also, definitely, we will have a big challenge with people, the veterans and their families, and we already have the big challenge with their assimilation with the mental health. I mean, nobody, as a post-Soviet Union country, before the war, nobody considered the thing mental health as a reality. Yeah, I mean, for European countries, it was not okay. I mean, not publicly accepted for Ukraine to say that you are psychologically traumatised or that you have the depression. Everybody accepted that there is something like depression. But nobody believed in it really, because it was not publicly accepted. Now the situation completely changed. Everybody feels and understand that mental health is important and does something. The reintegration of people is important because there are a lot of people come back from the war traumatised, also physically, but it doesn't mean they can't work and they can’t pay for their own family. This is a big challenge for Ukraine to find the working places and to reintegrate all the people in the society.

 On the other hand, the people that are not on the war have to be reintegrated into the war. This is a challenge for now because people don't-- I would not say that somebody forgot about the war. No, never. I mean, in Ukraine? Never. But to make all people work for the war on the like, third year of the war it's also somehow a challenge. So in general, answering your question, I hope that we will come stronger. I hope that we will find out the way, I would never say to like, make peace forever because there will never be peace forever. It's like a nature of people, unless we will have the alien invasion, and all the people of Earth will have to unite to fight the alien, we will always have wars, unfortunately, that's my opinion. However, to ensure, at least, I don't know, 100, 200, 300 years of peace for our children, it would be great if we could reach this.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Thank you, Victoria. I think we may have one final question, which is to ask you if there's anything else you want to say about the DNA of Kyiv? If we were to have asked you a different question in this conversation, would there have been anything else that you would have wanted to say?

Victoria Itskovych

Yeah, one small thing I would want to say about the perception of democracy. I already started to tell about this but it's important because it's one thing that we are doing here in Kyiv and with technology. Also, as any post-Soviet Union country, I also mentioned people don't really feel that-- some people, not all, don't really feel that democracy is real despite the fact they go to the, I don't know, presidential elections and they vote. And the President we have now, the President that was elected, absolutely transparently, definitely, yes. And this is a super strange situation for Soviet countries, yes? We have the list of presidents that were-- somebody’s not agreed, doesn't agree with this or that President. But nobody argues that this President is like, transparently elected. However, people really don't feel this.

What we are doing, for example, in Kyiv we are trying to put democracy as close to people as it can be. We have, like the petitions in Kyiv digital app. We have polling in Kyiv digital app. And recently, we launched the service that is called condominium votings. So we have this condominiums that are owned by the community of owners, and they have the right to make some decisions, how they spend their budget. And we made this condominium votings in the application. Why we did this? Now it's very important during the blackouts because the condominiums have to make decisions to purchase for example, the generator, solar panels, I don't know, water pumps or something but this is like the direct value. But for me, the indirect value is that people understand the value of the democracy. Because when you know, like all the people that you are voting with, you really understand that how the democracy works, and how your specific voice will influence the decision of the whole condominium. So it's also about resilience. It's also about distributed autonomous organisation to give the ability to the condominiums to be more flexible and more resilient, to stand in our times. So for us, it's our bigger like educational role as IT and the Kyiv City Council to give to people the understanding that they make their own decisions, not somebody, the President, the King, but they make their own decisions. So that's one thing I would want to add.