Ukraine-Russia War: CEOs Describe How They Survived

Ukrainian business leaders have been buffeted by both the geopolitical winds and local violence and unrest — although many of these leaders have fought in the war for 12 months. All along, they’ve struggled to keep their businesses afloat — an effort they say is essential to Ukraine’s future.

The war was devastating for the country’s economy, with GDP collapsing about 30% last year, according to the World Bank. The organization estimates that rebuilding the destroyed infrastructure will cost around US$350 billion. According to some estimates, real wages in private companies fell by about 27% in the first nine months of the war, while about 11% of companies in Ukraine are believed to have closed altogether.

And yet, most companies have survived — whether by adopting wartime business strategies, refocusing on the war effort, or even relocating to nearby countries to find new customers and stay afloat.

In the days leading up to the first anniversary of the conflict wealth We met with four leaders whom we had met for the first time in the early months of the war. While they insist their experiences of the past 12 months are not that uncommon among Ukrainians, each tells a story that is both heartbreaking and inspirational.

From lobster fishing to a wound on the battlefield

Just over a year ago, Serhii Pozniak, chairman of FinStream, a financial services company in Kiev, was lobstering on a yacht in the Caribbean, barefoot and in shorts — and a big smile on his face.

Amazingly, the smile is still there. But nothing else about Pozniak’s life resembles his carefree life in early 2022. When Russia invaded last February 24, he raced to rejoin the National Guard Battalion, where he served between 2014 and 2016, and spent the first nine months with fighting on the front line. In November, during a bitter artillery battle against Russian Wagner Group mercenaries in the Kreminna Forest in eastern Ukraine, Pozniak stepped on a landmine and the resulting explosion blew off his right foot. Comrades spent seven hours evacuating him through swampland; He was later amputated below the knee in a Kiev hospital and has been recovering ever since.

“My life changed in a few days,” Pozniak, 48, tells me from the hospital via Zoom – still smiling. “I know myself as a businessman, owner of financial companies. And on TV they say I’m one of the top three snipers in Ukraine,” he says. Although he was a reservist before the war, he finds it difficult to imagine his transformation from businessman to war veteran.

In early February, Pozniak persuaded doctors to allow him to leave the hospital on crutches for a few hours to meet the head of the National Bank of Ukraine to set up a small and medium-sized business fund to help these businesses grow participate in the expected enormous post-war reconstruction efforts. The fund could be an important partner for FinStream: the company attracts investors and provides financing for such companies.

FinStream, which generated $6 million in revenue last year, has only suffered a 10% drop in revenue from the war, according to Pozniak – something he sees as both an achievement and a valuable contribution to the country. “We did a lot of business,” he says. “And when the war is over, we will work on projects again.”

Until then, Pozniak will be comprehensively rehabilitated. He is due to fly to New York next month to be fitted with a prosthetic foot courtesy of Kind Deeds, an organization that treats war wounded in Ukraine.

A call from “hell on earth”

The day Russia invaded last February, Serhiy Zhuykov, CEO of BlackShield Capital Group, a $500 million wealth management firm in Kiev, went to war with no military experience. He joined a volunteer battalion and after brief combat training was sent to the war front.

Zhuykov, 40, could hardly have imagined what his life would be like a year later. Over a cracked cell phone line from the Bakhmut war zone in eastern Ukraine, Zhuykov says he feels “in hell on earth” and is fighting a bitter struggle for survival that he says resembles World War I. “This eastern front line is very, very dangerous,” he says.

If wealth When he first interviewed him last May, Zhuykov predicted that the world of business would be profoundly changed by the war, separating those who chose to fight in the war from those who stayed out of combat. Even more so now that Zhuykov is a seasoned soldier fighting Europe’s most brutal war in 80 years – and bearing the emotional scars of the past year. “We lost a lot of friends from our volunteer battalion,” he says, adding that 115 soldiers died in three days. “These months were very difficult.”

Despite all this, Zhuykov—like Pozniak—was determined to keep his business afloat, seeing it as an essential part of the war effort. While he wasn’t struggling, other key BlackShield executives have been working to grow the business in Europe and Dubai. “It’s been a very difficult year for the financial markets because of the war and inflation,” he says. “But now the market is growing and we believe that this year we will have the same situation as at the beginning of the war.”

And he believes his business skills came in handy in battle. “One of the best skills is adaptability,” he says. “It helped me be very effective in war.”

Not just tragedy, but opportunity

Weeks before the war began a year ago, Anatoliy Amelin, 45, stocked up on ammunition and a carbine ready to fight if Russia invaded.

But the strategy and investment director of TitanEra, a major titanium producer in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, was discharged from military service over the aftermath of a stroke he suffered years ago that left, among other things, double vision.

So Amelin threw himself into his other job, as a board member of the Ukrainian State Railways. That was crucial: With no airport open since February 24 last year, Ukraine has transported most of its weapons and millions of refugees by rail. The company has also reconstructed 29 of the 69 bridges destroyed in the war so far.

“A year ago, no one believed that Ukraine would last more than a few days,” says Amelin, speaking of Dnipro, which is close to the front. “We knew that if we didn’t help each other, we would never beat Russia,” he says, adding that leaders have banded together over the past year. When the military issued an urgent appeal for donations in early February, a group of CEOs in Kyiv raised $50,000 in five hours, he says.

Courtesy of Anatoliy Amelin

Ukraine’s war-torn GDP has slumped by about 30% in the past year, forcing executives like Amelin to drastically reconsider their business strategy. One of TitanEra’s mines was seized and looted by Russian forces.

Despite this, the company has retained all 650 employees – 20 of whom are currently fighting in the war. Velta, a group of titanium companies that includes TitanEra, supplies about 2% of the world’s titanium commodity, and its American division plans to go public on Nasdaq in 2025. Velta has entered into negotiations with officials in several US states to build a plant in the US later this year.

And even as the war rages on, Ukraine’s economists and business experts have begun making plans for a better-managed and less corrupt post-war economy. “It is very important to rebuild Ukraine 2.0,” says Amelin. “War is not just a tragedy. It is also an opportunity to create a new country with a new quality of life.”

“No Distress Sale of Assets”

For some companies, the conflict has meant dramatic downsizing as employees have fled the country and others have struggled throughout the year.

Such was the case with UMG Investments, a Kiev investment firm that manages three portfolios. A year later, the company’s EBITDA is between 20% and 25% of its pre-war output of $150 million per year, and its portfolios are significantly smaller. The UMG has reduced its workforce from around 5,000 to just 1,100 people, around 130 of whom are engaged in combat against Russian forces.

“There was no bailout of assets,” says CEO Andrey Gorokhov, 46. “We did our best to cut anything we felt was unnecessary,” he said. He spoke to wealth from Warsaw, where he was evacuated with his wife and two children after Russia invaded last February. Gorokhov’s wife is dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, so he was allowed to leave the country, unlike most men under 60

With his restructured business, Gorokhov has started looking for new investors in Europe after concluding that Ukraine is unlikely to return to normal anytime soon.

“We think there’s a good chance the war won’t end this year,” he says. “We had to create a system in which the business can continue.” Despite the war, UMG ended 2022 with a profit and paid a dividend to investors – all crucial for Ukraine, says Gorokhov. “If you do poorly, business collapses and the government doesn’t get money to meet social and military obligations.”