Went through Russian captivity, did not break down, and became a Programmer
My story
My name is Viktor, aka vicchern. I am a Software Engineer working for an American IOT company. I mostly deal with java backend and unit tests. I live in Ukraine, near Kyiv, where I moved with my family from Lugansk in 2014. Today I will tell you a real story about what we went through with my family.
Summer 2014
In July 2014, during the bombings of the city, we lived in, my wife and I decided to evacuate her and my son to the West of Ukraine. At the same time, I would stay in the East.
My idea was straightforward — to assist disadvantaged people in evacuation from the war zone.
My partner and I managed to get 32 people out.
The last ones I took out were two families: an African person from an occupied Ukrainian city with no documents to prove his identity with his pregnant wife and mother-in-law and a girl with a newborn daughter.
On 08/2/2014, I was stopped on the road by the Russian military and taken captive. They searched me, took me to one of the locations of illegal armed groups, and put me in a basement where all the captives were.
They fed us once a day. The first ten days were tough; it was hot, no bathroom, no teeth brushes, no self-hygiene stuff, and so on. Our room was exceptional. I was imprisoned with many interesting people, including a businessman and a scientist.
8/08/2014 wasn’t my day. It was a sad day.
It was a usual interrogation, except this time, there was a baseball bat on the table. After that, they put a baseball helmet on my head and started to beat me with baseball bats, checking whether the helmet would withstand blows or not.
BUT THAT WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING. The main thing is ahead.
More people came when they heard the sounds of strikes. One of them brought with him a device, a phone used on the front of the battlefield.
When the handle is turning on the side, this device produces alternating electrical current through the wires. They connected the wires to my toes and started turning the handle.
I have never felt such intense pain.
You think that you will deal with that pain, but it becomes stronger and stronger. In the end, you feel nothing but pain and your own scream. This went on for about an hour.
In the end, they got nothing from me; then soldiers told me that I have an hour. If I do not confess to what the military asked me about, they will shoot me. My torturers returned me to the cell. I always thought that I am not afraid of death, but it turned out that I am.
Everything changed during my last hour — my perception of the world surrounding me, my circumstances, and the people around me. I pulled myself together, prayed for the very last time, wrote a letter to my wife, and started awaiting death.
At that moment, my wife was already in Lugansk, but she didn’t know if I was alive or not. As it became clear later, they were bluffing, and no one was going to shoot me.
On 08/02/2014, my wife already knew that I was missing. She panicked at first, but on 08/03/2014, she pulled herself together, left our son with her mother, and went to Lugansk.
Just for your understanding.
It was the most challenging time during the war in the East of Ukraine. A lot of bombings. The Ukrainian Army almost surrounded the city. No way in, no way out. No trains, buses, or taxis.
When my wife figured out how to get into the town, she started to look for my dead body in the morgues. The morgue workers told her that I wasn’t there and gave her a piece of advice about where she may find me.
On 08/10/2014, she found me. What a meeting it was! You can imagine. I could describe it in one word. HAPPINESS.
On 08/27/2014, she met by chance with the commander of those soldiers. He asked his men who the girl was and why she was crying. They answered that she came to her husband, who has been imprisoned for 25 days.
The commander ordered them to let her in and resolve the issue with my release.
So, that day they set me free. I am still so thankful for this to my God and my wife.
We lived for a few months in the West of Ukraine and, after that, moved to Kyiv.
Summer 2018 — Summer 2021
My path to Software Engineering.
In 2018 I decided to study Software Engineering because it was an excellent opportunity to realize myself, work with intelligent people, and earn good money.
I chose backend development after talking with some of my programmer friends.
After a few weeks, I started thinking that I would never get the knowledge I was looking for.
Here, you need to stop and realize that it may not be your fault if something is too hard for you. Maybe it’s because the resources you are using describe the subject you are studying a hard way.
If you don’t know something, it just means that you haven’t studied that yet.
One day I discovered Udemy — a site of video courses, where I took a few classes.
After that, I applied to the Academy of EPAM, an outsource company. But my candidacy was rejected.
As a result, in April of 2019, I started suffering from depression, which lasted until November 2019.
In the midst of that depression, the organizational committee of the Web Summit invited me to volunteer in Portugal.
It was a great time—a kind of reboot for me.
When I returned, I applied to SoftServe IT Academy. Among 150 candidates, they chose my name. And this opened a path to my dream.
But then Covid-19 happened at the beginning of 2020. Almost none of the students from my group in the Academy were hired.
So in April 2020, when I had no job and Ukraine was under lockdown, my current employer found my CV and offered me a job. After a few interviews, I was hired.
So, this is the end of my story. My family and I are closer and closer to our dream about normal life, but also we don’t forget about the needs of the people around us.
You will master any road step by step. This truth is relevant at all times.
