Just over two years ago, Kharkiv Regional Council chairwoman Tetiana Yehorova-Lutsenko was forced to grab her two sons and go into hiding as invading Russian troops sought to assassinate locally elected officials, especially those aligned with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People Party that the university law professor serves as deputy party chief.
The battle for Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city located kilometers from the Russian border, was more violent, more deadly than the Russian blitz to take out Zelensky and his government in the capital, Kiev.
The heroic resistance and defense of Kharkiv shocked Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin henchmen, who fully expected the predominantly Russian-speaking city to capitulate and welcome the invading soldiers rather than fight a block-by-block insurgency, leaving large swaths of working-class apartment complexes in rubble.
But two years after the invasion, Yehorova-Lutsenko has expanded her role by leading economic development to the region, such as persuading a Canadian company to build thousands of high-quality prefabricated homes for displaced workers from occupied Donetsk that now work in Kharkiv-based factories.
Yehorova-Lutsenko, who became the president of the Ukrainian association of locally elected officials last year, is now copying a page from the highly successful model used by US governors to promote economic investment in their home states: foreign trade missions accompanied by accomplished and dynamic business leaders.
Her direct counterpart in the United States is Utah Governor Spencer Cox, the current chairman of the National Governors Association.
Not only has Utah been the US state most active in Ukraine – leading numerous people to people and business to business missions throughout Ukraine – but the association of Utah defense companies 47G Utah Aerospace and Defense, led by Aaaron Starks, was the first US defense group to sign a memorandum of understanding with Zelensky to establish and promote co-production in the country.
During the National Governors Association Winter Meeting in Washington, President Joe Biden stressed to the governors their important role in helping Ukraine to achieve victory.
Utah, which calls itself “Silicon Slopes,” has surpassed Texas as the best state to do business in thanks to its diverse mix of companies, from high tech to agrochemicals, and a global outlook stemming from the Church of Latter Day Saints’ (Mormons’) tradition of sending its youth out to the world as missionaries.
Not only does Cox lead foreign trade missions with the chief executive officers and owners of leading Utah-based companies, but the Salt Lake City-based World Trade Center hosts foreign leaders and their companies. WTC Utah is headed by Ukrainian speaker Jonathan Freedman.
Yehorova-Lutsenko will lead her US investment mission with two Kharkiv-native business owners: Ivan Shvaichenko, the founder and CEO of Boosteroid, the world’s third-largest cloud gaming hosting company after GE Force and xCloud of Microsoft, and Alexander Kroshka, the founder and CEO of Ukrainian green commercial and residential boiler manufacturer EPG-Kolvi Group of Companies.
Boosteroid’s Shvaichenko has just opened his US headquarters in Houston, Texas, where he is investing millions to expand the company’s half-dozen data centers and cementing his business relationships with Advanced Micro Devices and Hewlett Packard Enterprises.
Boosteroid, with its 10-year partnership agreement with Microsoft’s Activision and commercial agreement with South Korea’s Samsung, along with HPE and AMD, has created a group rivaling the giant Nvidia with its market capitalization of nearly $2 trillion.
Kroshka has made EPG-Kolvi into a leading heating-supply company, with its growth mainly due to replacing energy-inefficient and polluting systems of the former USSR.
Kroshka, like Shvaichenko, is living proof of the resilience and dynamism of the Ukrainian private sector, as both were able to grow their companies even after being bombed by the Russians during the invasion and now facing near daily missile attacks (intercepted by US Patriot anti-missile systems).
“Right at the beginning of the invasion, we, like everyone else, were in shock. The plant was damaged when an aerial bomb fell. Thanks to the fact that the structure was strong enough, everything held together. But it was a serious blow,” Kroshka said in an interview with RBK Ukraine, adding, “Many of the staff have gone abroad [after February 24, 2024]. But we survived the most difficult period, even increasing our production capacity.”
In his spare time, Kroshka invented and built an AI-guided drone capable of delivering an explosive payload 750 to 1,000 kilometers inside Russia. The AI guiding system makes the drone immune to Russian electronic warfare, and the distance between Kharkiv and Moscow is 765km, making the $50,000 drone the cheapest cruise missile in the world.
(President Ronald Reagan’s deployment of US cruise missiles in Europe was the final straw that broke the financial and military back of the Soviet Union.)
Moore takes a page from Mississippi’s successful mission to Uzbekistan, when then-governor Phil Byrant traveled to the geopolitically important Central Asian nation with number of CEOs and business owners.
Moore can do the same, and even more, with a delegation of Maryland-based companies – led by the CEO of Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin, James D Taiclit – on an official mission to the Baltic state of Estonia and a lower-key visit to Ukraine.
Baltimore, Maryland, civil-rights icon Marvin “Doc” Cheatham said Governor Moore can return from his visit to Estonia with an agreement to staff Baltimore elementary schools with Estonian computer-science teachers. Estonia is the only nation that teaches computer science and cybersecurity at third grade, while only three US states have mandatory computer-science courses for secondary education (ages 12-18).
Boosteroid’s Shvaichenko also won the personal attention of the former Rhode Island governor and venture capitalist, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, after his talks to build a server data center and software and gaming academy in America’s most economically depressed and segregated city of Gary, Indiana, located a mere 50km from Chicago.
Not only is Raimondo doing everything in her power to promote US corporate investment into Ukrainian companies like Boosteroid and EPG-Kolvi, but Shvaichenko’s willingness to create new tech-sector jobs and a bootcamp in Gary fulfills much of the promise of the $39 billion Chips and Science Act to make the United States self-sufficient in the manufacture of critical semiconductors by 2030 and create “hundreds of thousands of new jobs.”
The bill was passed through the bipartisan efforts of US Senators Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, and Todd Young, a Republican from Indiana.
At a standing-room-only crowd at the Center for Strategic Studies, Raimondo bluntly stated that self-sufficiency in semiconductor chips is vital to US national security and that the world’s largest economy cannot be dependent on one country (Taiwan) for the supply of chips needed for everything from cars to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
According to US intelligence analysts, one of the top three threats to the national security of the US, the European Union and Asian allies is that Chinese President Xi Jinping will order a two-week blockade of Taiwan and set off a veritable Pearl Harbor on global financial markets.
Raimondo awarded the first tranches of the $39 billion of the CHIPs Act to UK-based BAE Systems to build a semiconductor factory in Nashua, New Hampshire, to supply the US Department of Defense; $1.5 billion to the United Arab Emirates’ sovereign-wealth controlled GlobalFoundaries to produce automotive and sensitive chips in Malta, New York and Vermont; and Chandler, Arizona-based Microchip Technology to produce microcontroller units (MCUs).
While she is fully aware the initial awards did not make her friends with the giants Intel and Nvidia, Raimondo says she is confident industry leaders will be even more motivated in submitting value-added proposals.
But the problems for Ukraine are not the democratically elected leaders of the West, but resentful mandarins who violate CNN founder Ted Turner’s motto: lead, follow or get out of the way.
“The problem for Ukraine is not support from Western and Ukrainian leadership but the second line of bureaucrats and mid-level executives who do everything to delay or undermine the efforts of their principals,” said the vice-chairman of PKO’s Ukraine unit Kredobank, Adam Swirksi.
Another Biden administration leader in getting private-sector investment into Ukraine is the president of the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), Scott Nathan, who said he welcomes the initiative of Yehorova-Lutsenko highlighting investment in Ukraine companies.
Zelensky is like any successful political leader or CEO, who dream of cloning themselves so they can be everywhere.
But as he cannot clone himself, Zelensky is pushing for regional and municipal officials like Yehorova-Lutsenko to travel the globe to help support the country in its existential battle for survival and create the global economic footprint as it prepares to enter the European Union by the end of 2025.
The question world leaders must now ask themselves whether they want a new Canada as a member of the European Union or a new South Korea where NATO soldiers will be stationed to defend against a new North Korea.