Azov «Rave» 29 years old. Until February 2022, he worked as a game designer at Ubisoft and participated in the development of one of his favorite games, Assassin’s Creed. With the start of the full-scale invasion, «Rave» joined the Armed Forces, served as a scout in the Avdiivka sector for over a year, and now serves in the fundraising department of Azov One. The ITC editorial team tells the story of a successful Ubisoft IT specialist who found himself at war and is now involved in fundraising for the legendary «Azov» brigade.
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I’m actually from Chernivtsi, but I moved to Kyiv when I was eight years old because my father got a job. The family saved up money, bought an apartment and moved in together. When it came time to choose my future profession, I almost immediately decided to go into advertising and PR. I have always considered myself quite creative, and in 2013 this field was quite popular. That was the beginning of the digital advertising era in Ukraine, and there were some very interesting cases.
My family supported me, especially since my mother is an interior designer and a very creative person herself. That’s how I became a student of the Faculty of Advertising and PR at Shevchenko University. There were only 6-7 guys out of 80 people in my class.
Despite the fact that Shevchenko is considered a great university, the education for PR and advertising professionals there was very archaic. Everyone started actively working with targeting, digital approaches, and strategic insights, while we continued to learn fonts in newspapers. I was upset because only about 20% of all subjects were really good.
Nevertheless, the field itself remained very interesting to me — I saw my friends and classmates from the second year start working and developing. Some of them quickly got into international large agencies or powerful local ones like Banda.
But I decided to finish my studies and earn my living in a taxi. Once I went to the United States on a work and travel program and saw that all the taxi drivers, there were carrying gum, water, and lollipops.
I had a car, so as soon as I got back, I started taxiing. I signed up for Uber, bought 200 UAH of gum, asked each client if they were okay with their temperature and what kind of music they wanted to listen to. I also knew English, so I often took foreigners.
Now it’s more or less commonplace, but in those years it was a success — I got a lot of positive feedback and a huge tea, and they could leave me 1000 hryvnias.
But I perceived taxiing as a part-time job — I continued to study and look at my classmates with admiration. And after graduation, I started seeking employment and immediately went to the Ukrainian branch of Leo Burnett. In just a few weeks, I learned a lot about the world of advertising there that I hadn’t heard in four years of study.
If you have the desire and motivation, but no experience, Azov will teach you everything you need for further service. Fill out the application format the link.
We got a computer in our family early on, and I’ve been playing video games since I was three years old and love them. I always dreamed of being a part of it, but I didn’t understand how to do it. So I worked in advertising, periodically looking at vacancies in dream companies like Ubisoft. I realized that I didn’t get into any of them. They require a lot of expertise — if you’re an artist, you have to be a super-artist, where would I go with my knowledge of newspaper fonts?
But then I saw that they have an academy for intern programmers, after which you can get into the company itself. I started learning programming on my own, through courses, YouTube, and a friend helped me. But it didn’t work out, I wasn’t interested.
Then I found a physical programming school, Dan IT: I thought that physical training would be a very cool additional incentive for me. It cost 90 thousand hryvnias to study there, so I started saving money for it. The plan was stretched over two years — to raise funds, then study at school, then go to an internship at Ubisoft.
I had just started to move forward with it when a vacancy for a junior tester appeared. I saw that in theory I was qualified — I had to know the industry very well, have a good level of English, know basic testing theory, and have some technical skills. I bought two books on testing, studied them in two days, and went for an interview. And I was hired. That’s how I ended up at Ubisoft.
I immediately got into my dream project — Assassin’s Creed. I told them how much I loved this game during the interview, and they took that into account. Ubisoft testers have a lot of access to video game documentation, so I worked and at the same time I was constantly looking at something and studying.
After a while, the company offered me a new opportunity to enter a game design school for testers. It was completely different from programming — I was very interested in studying on weekends and in the evenings.
Three months of preparation, six stages of selection, interviews with game designers themselves. For me, it was a space – in the Ukrainian office of Ubisoft, out of 700 people, there were only about 8 game designers, and I always looked at them with great admiration.
I went through the Academy, got an internship, and then a probationary period. In fact, it was a year of constant learning and a very cool experience. I came to classes as if they were work, and all this time the company continued to pay my salary. The company’s game designers gave us lectures, we made our own projects, even made a mod for a physical board game.
By 2022, I had been working as a game designer for four years. I loved my job and my life. I had a huge number of friends, could hang out with 3 different groups of friends in one Saturday, and was constantly riding.
I remember there was such a boom in therapy at the time, and everyone was working with a psychologist, but I didn’t even have that need. I liked my life so much, I was absolutely happy.
In the winter of 2022, everyone was very tense. I was skeptical, thinking it would just be an escalation in the JFO zone, but I talked to my brother about leaving Kyiv with my daughter just in case.
And on the 24th, it went to hell. I remember waking up not to explosions, but to calls from my friends. I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, and I was shaking — my body was not listening. I said to myself: «Pull yourself together, man».
We met my friends, got in the car and I drove them to Chernivtsi because I was the only one with a license and a place to live. The trip took 16 hours and somewhere there, standing at a gas station, I realized that I was going to fight.
The next day, on February 26, my brother and I went to the military registration and enlistment office. For several days, we were either collected or released, and in the evening of February 28, we finally went to one of the training centers to study to become scouts.
We were settled in tents, and the training began — we got up at five in the morning, shooting, lectures, disassembling weapons, orienteering by stars and moss on trees. Just a week later, we were redirected to another training center and eventually got assigned to the 110th Brigade’s reconnaissance company.
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It was a very abrupt change in the way I was used to, but somehow I didn’t even get too stressed. I guess I didn’t have time: all this life in tents, the company, it was even fun. It was a bit like a children’s camp — I had to get everyone up and gather them in the dining room for lunch.
When the company was being formed in the Cherkasy region, I was put in charge of the electronic intelligence company’s unit because I was an IT guy. I was sitting at the computer, filling in the database about everyone, there was such a huge questionnaire. A few more days passed and we finally went to the Donetsk region. We went to Avdiivka.
At first, my brother and me, as «IT specialists», were thrown into electronic intelligence. In fact, we had to sit and listen to the interceptions of the f***ers all the time. Catching waves, searching for them, displaying them, eavesdropping, displaying coordinates, transmitting data. It’s such a monotonous, identical job, the only action is regular shelling from whatever is available. Then we would fall to the ground and crawl out or run into the corridor, sometimes shrapnel would fly in.
I approached the commander and said that I did not mobilize for this purpose, that I wanted to go with the guys. After some time, I persuaded him, and I was indeed transferred, and there I was made a squad leader in a platoon.
And the classic combat missions began. The most difficult thing for me was to worry about others. One day, my brother, along with several scouts and newly arrived infantrymen, drove to one of the positions. It was well marked by the enemy, and there were constant medium-range contacts.
Then there was a particularly fierce assault, at a short distance, literally 30 meters. Many guys were killed, three of our scouts received heavy bullet and shrapnel wounds. My brother was among them.
We were supposed to send vehicles to evacuate them, but because of the fighting, it took a long time. I just watched the drone broadcasts of our brothers, including my brother, lying under fire and could not do anything about it, it was killing me from the inside.
I, along with my friends, began to beg the commander to send us for evacuation, but he refused: it was too risky.
We want to fight effectivelyrather than advertising the service. Action.
In the end, we did go after them. Two LNG tanks and a tank started working on us immediately with direct fire. When they work on you like that, you hardly hear the whistle. We were oh**ed, we flew into a dugout, trees were falling around us, everything was falling apart. My brother is 400 meters away, he’s heavily wounded, but I can’t even lift my head out of the shelter.
It was very difficult, but we managed to pull them out. There were several similar situations during combat missions when I was responsible for the lives of others. I even worked with a military psychologist afterwards and realized that I no longer wanted to be the leader of the group and be responsible for the lives of others through my commands during combat missions.
There was no fear for myself. I think it was not because of courage, but because of fatigue. For many months we had no vacations, no rotations, we worked as the main team in the area.
I was so tired that at some points I stopped paying attention to the whistling of bullets, shelling or danger.
In March 2023, I was finally given my first vacation. I found out that a fundraising department had opened in «Azov» and they were looking for a marketer.
I came to Kyiv and immediately went for an interview, which I passed. I was very lucky, because at that time transfers from the Armed Forces to the NGU were carried out by order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, so they could not but let me go (in general, the situation with transfers was very difficult, even my brothers from our then brigade could not be transferred to the SSO). And I quickly transferred to «Azov».
«Azov» — not a TCC. Only motivated volunteers are accepted to join the brigade. Fill out the application form at the link and join the unit.
I started working at «AZOV.ONE». This is the part of «Azov» responsible for fundraising, fundraising and other issues related to the support of the brigade.
My education helped me a lot here. First of all, not even with knowledge, but with social capital — my classmates and friends from my studies have long worked in many Ukrainian companies. I started meeting them all and offering to do something together. It turned out great — many of my friends knew about my military background and wanted to help the military. Everything came together.
Of course, I have not worked as a marketer or fundraiser recently. But I still had some experience, education and many friends who helped me. When I needed a strategy, I didn’t do it myself, because I don’t have the expertise. I engaged people, I was the part that connected all these processes.
We have done many cutting-edge projects in the field of meetings. For example, collaborations with leading Ukrainian brands, limited edition merchandise drops, physical festivals and charity races, etc.
We also managed to be trendsetters in some fundraising moments: the volunteers who gave birth to the Azov Tyloviks (a project that basically gave rise to team meetings), the skin for monobank «Azov Seals», which «Klopa» from the Azov press service made with us (no one else had done this at the time, the result was 15 million in a day), and now we have launched a donation subscription to the brigade under the «Current» brand. Now we see similar implementations in other countries, and it’s great. The main thing is that the Armed Forces should constantly receive funds because our existence depends on it.
My job now is to be creative in the world of fundraising. You constantly have to generate new ideas for making money, implement projects and partnerships with brands, be a trendsetter somewhere, spy on other people’s cool ideas and adapt them.
When I first returned to Kyiv, I felt the «survivor instinct especially strongly. Many of those with whom I fought side by side for more than a year were killed or seriously injured simply because it happened. Because the shell fell closer to them than to me.
I still feel it partly, but I reassure myself that I am doing really useful work on a large scale.
Everything that happened before 2022 has lost its meaning. I don’t like riding horses anymore, and my circle of friends has narrowed considerably. I feel happy when I can disconnect from reality, when I listen to good music or a movie. And also the sound of a car turbine whistling.
Actions are important, not slogans.
