Software engineering company Akvelon, based in Bellevue, Wash., is mourning the loss of a colleague who was killed while serving in Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s war.
Yana Rykhlitska, 29, died March 3 in a mortar attack on the vehicle she was traveling in near Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, while serving as a paramedic in the 93rd Brigade of the Ukrainian Ground Forces.
Rykhlitska, who would have turned 30 years old in a few weeks, was buried today.
“It’s war. It’s real. Real people die,” said Sergei Dreizin, Akvelon’s co-founder and CEO. “It makes it very, very real. For being a few thousand miles away, it comes home.”
Rykhlitska, a senior technical recruiter for the company, was active in Ukraine’s defense since the beginning, initially coordinating Akvelon’s delivery of supplies to the country, before training to become a combat drone operator, and eventually deciding to work as a paramedic.
She was a devoted student of the Brazilian martial art Capoeira, which blends elements of fighting and dance to overcome opponents who have physical or technological advantages or greater numbers.
“She was very, very brave,” Dreizin said. “Very strong. Big heart. Big smile, always smiling. Tough, though. Super tough.”
Dreizin recalled Rykhlitska’s response when he suggested building a small factory to make small stoves for civilians in Ukraine. “No,” she told him. “Civilians need to figure that stuff out for themselves. We need to win the war first.”
Rykhlitska was photographed by The Associated Press working in a field hospital 10 days before her death.
Akvelon, which closed its operations in Russia at the onset of the war last year, has a little more than 100 employees in Ukraine, in addition to offices in countries in the region including Serbia and Kazakhstan. From a business perspective, the company has been able to continue working on software projects.
At the same time, leaders and employees of the company are also focusing on supporting Ukraine through the charity United with Ukraine, led by Nina Shapirshteyn, a American Ukrainian who started the non-profit organization with Dreizin and Akvelon co-founder Constantine Korovkin.
Dreizin was born and raised in Moscow. He moved to the U.S. in 1992, after the Soviet Union’s collapse, getting his computer science degree from the University of Minnesota before going to work for Microsoft in the Seattle area.
“My main concern is that a lot of Americans, probably more so than Europeans, don’t understand that Putin is not fighting Ukraine,” Dreizin said of the Russian president. “He is fighting the West. And if he wins there, then the next target is going to be the Baltics, and the next target is going to be Poland, and on and on and on.”
From his perspective, Dreizin said, “You have to figure out a way where Russia not only loses the war, but it also loses its ability to be a nuclear power.”
Akvelon held a companywide call on Monday with a moment of silence in Rykhlitska’s memory.
“We talked about it. Everybody connected,” Dreizin said. “You just continue to do what you do, and hope you don’t have to have that moment of silence again.”
He added, “I definitely don’t want to have a moment of silence for a Ukraine that’s no longer there. … We need to win this war, and that means that everybody here or anywhere else needs to understand that paying for it with money is better than paying for it with blood.”