IT professionals in Ukraine's Armed Forces significantly decreasing government spending on IT products – expert

Valerii Churkin, head of the Technology Solutions Scaling Center (TSSC), stated this in a comment to Ukrinform.

“TSSC is a leading high-tech military unit with the culture of a modern IT company. The unit was created with the support and participation of the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in order to develop and implement ideas that should create a strategic asymmetric advantage over the enemy. Today, we act as a developer and a center of expertise in the digitization of the army and military technology, being outside the commercial environment,” he said.

Commenting on the use of IT specialists in the military, Churkin noted that specialists who previously worked in world-renowned international companies are currently engaged in the army.

“We are using a unique opportunity. People who joined the army as volunteers in 2022-2023 — and most of them gained real combat experience — are united around the solution of program tasks at the request of time. Today, we employ specialists who previously worked in world-renowned international companies for such clients as Google, Facebook, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Samsung, SoftServe, EPAM, GlobalLogic, Luxoft, and Ciclum. Based on their own successful civilian experience, combined with the experience gained in combat operations in the most difficult areas of the front, they, like no one else, feel the need for innovation for the army and society. United in project teams, they work on the development of technologies that will help gain an advantage on the battlefield and preserve the lives of our soldiers,” Churkin said.

According to him, the work of high-class professionals as military personnel has already saved Ukraine tens of millions of hryvnias.

“It is worth noting the profitability of army developers. Some IT products contain information with restricted access, so only military personnel should work with it. In addition, the presence of full-time highly qualified developers helps significantly speed up the production process and significantly reduce costs for current projects. The work of high-class professionals as military personnel has already saved Ukraine tens of millions of hryvnias, because the costs of providing money for the military are significantly lower than market rates in combination with other costs and profits of contractor companies. An additional important advantage is that intellectual property rights for the creation of software complexes already belong to the state,” the expert said.