Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine has caused a mass exodus of its citizens to other countries. Among them turn out to be quite a few really qualified specialists. Orbital Today found some stories of people who have become a boon to their space industry by moving to other countries.

War and engineers
Ukrainian engineers have made the global space industry much stronger over the past few years. At least, that’s the conclusion Orbital Today draws from the stories they’ve collected. They all concern people who have moved out of the country since the start of the large-scale invasion.
In general, the fact that Ukraine has given a lot to the global space industry in the past is no secret to anyone. The names of Yurii Kondratiuk, Serhii Korolev and Valentyn Hlushko speak for themselves. The first Ukrainian cosmonaut Pavlo Popovych flew into space back in 1962. And in 1997, the astronaut of already independent Ukraine flew into space on the American shuttle.
Ukraine has inherited significant space potential in the form of industry and specialists since the Soviet Union. However, economic instability prevented it from being realized and developed to the fullest extent. Therefore, engineers have started to leave Ukraine.
The war with Russia, which has actually been going on not since 2022 but since 2014 has intensified emigration trends. The large-scale invasion turned it into a real disaster, with 6.7 million displaced Ukrainians known as of August 2024. 4.7 million of them were in developed countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Despite many prejudices, these people are not just hungry mouths to feed. There are enough qualified engineers among them, including those working in the space industry. They have very tangibly strengthened the productive capacity of the countries they have moved to. Here are three stories of these people.
Three stories of Ukrainian engineers
Yaroslav Pustovyi once worked for the National Space Agency of Ukraine. In 1996-98, he worked in a cooperative program with NASA that organized the Leonid Kadeniuk flight. This experience later came in handy when he joined Canadian Arrow’s private development team and remained working in Canada.
Yaroslav now works as Executive Director and Head of Security at Maritime Launch Services project. This company builds a spaceport in Canada from which Ukrainian rockets will be launched. He hopes that in the future, his work will not only provide the whole mankind with additional opportunities in space exploration, but will also attract Ukrainian manufacturers to this process.
Inesa Kostenko is a specialist in space law. She researched and taught it at the Karazin Kharkiv National University before the large-scale invasion. However, a violent invasion by the Russian army forced her to seek another country to continue her career.
Therefore, since July 2022, she has moved to the University of Leicester to study how satellite technology affects modern military conflicts. Of course, at the same time the Russian-Ukrainian war is at the center of her attention and she does not forget about her homeland in general.
But Olga Motsyk-Schaafsma did not work directly with space programs in Ukraine, but dreamed about it. She was educated as a physicist in Kyiv and eventually decided she wanted to do something related to solar system exploration.
She eventually found herself in a position as a jet engine engineer at the European Research Technology Center. That is, she is part of the European Space Agency. She hopes that her work will allow Ukrainian science to regain its credibility in the international community after the end of the war.
According to orbitaltoday.com