Kharkiv, once an IT hub for Ukraine, now struggles to provide services after workers fled war

One Friday evening, in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, there's a saxophonist crooning on the cobblestone street corner, families go out to dinner. Teenagers laugh in the streets with their friends, and in the main square more than a dozen people gather around a guitarist and dance as fluffy snowflakes fall to the ground.

This city, though it is under constant threat of Russian missile attacks, has become a refuge for many Ukrainians fleeing the fighting dominating the east and south and looking for some semblance of normalcy. According to the Lviv Regional State Administration, the region is currently hosting around 250,000 refugees from other parts of the country. 

The unfortunate side effect being that the cities and towns they've left behind are struggling to maintain services. 

Vitalii Kucherov has a promising career as a computer software engineer. 

When the Russian onslaught began last year in his home city of Kharkiv in the northeast, it wasn't fear that propelled the man in his early 20s to move his life, but the fact that his friends were leaving. He already worked remotely, so it was an easy decision.

He had a dream of one day opening an amateur photo lab in Kharkiv, turning his passion for photography into something bigger around which he could build a community. After relocating to Lviv, he and a few friends turned that dream into a reality and opened a new business in the city's old town. 

He emerges from the darkroom they've built in a converted apartment where he's been working with a new member to rectify some issues she's having with spots on her prints.

"So basically, this is our place," he said. "It contains our lab, also we have this studio where you can use our equipment, studio lights, video lights."

The lab, called Berliner Strasse, has gained attention quickly, he says, showing the facility's calendar, booked nearly constantly. Even amid the upheaval of the war, the community he envisioned is coming together.

"Yeah, I don't want to go back," said Kucherov, who continues to work remotely as a software engineer. 

"I was in Kharkiv, but there's no reason for me to come back because most of my friends are also here and I really like this city. And I don't want to leave because of the lab. It's usually like my second home."

Kucherov is far from alone. Tens of thousands of people worked in information and technology services in Kharkiv before the invasion, according to industry records. The city, home to nearly 1.5 million people before the war, is estimated to have halved in size. 

Because IT is already a highly mobile industry, workers were easily able to flee the violence while also maintaining their careers and providing for their families. But this kind of exodus has repercussions for the cities left behind. 

"Mainly all companies relocated part of their teams — not everybody but partly — to different cities of Ukraine and outside of Ukraine," said Olga Shapoval, executive director of the industry group the Kharkiv IT Cluster.