Employee spotlight:
Anastasiia Pekun
As part of LoopMe’s Ukraine Support Month, August’s employee spotlights feature Ukrainian employees, who tell us more about themselves and share their experiences of life in Ukraine since February 2022.
What is your role at LoopMe?
I’m an Assistant Accountant.
How has your experience at LoopMe been throughout your time here overall, and especially with everything going on? The expertise and the opportunities I have access to here are greater than at my previous workplace. A significant advantage is the ability to work remotely during wartime and a fairly flexible schedule in general.
How has the war on Ukraine affected your work life / role / time in the office?
The war was one of the reasons why I changed my job. I needed to find a more stable job with prospects, and the Ukrainian job market could not offer such opportunities with the start of the full-scale invasion. At the same time, I had to rapidly develop as a specialist, acquiring new knowledge in order to become an employee of an international company like LoopMe, which was a huge advantage for me. As for the time spent in the office during the working day, there were times when after an air raid alarm, we would go up to the office a couple of minutes before a meeting was due to start.
How have these almost 1000 days of full-scale invasion changed you?
The war has changed each of us. I can definitely say that I am not the same carefree girl I was 3 years ago. All this is very difficult and has a cumulative effect, meaning that we now look at many things differently. For example, while watching an action movie and seeing how the main characters run away from explosions, I now realise that if this were real life the consequences would be completely different. The names of weapons, missiles and combat vehicles used to be distant, incomprehensible concepts. Now we not only recognise their sounds, but we also know what they look like and what they’re capable of.
How has the war impacted aspects of daily life that people may take for granted?
I’m trying to live my best years in the conditions of “make it before the curfew” and “make it before the power and water are turned off”. I never used to attach much importance to street lighting, or even the presence of electricity. But, when I returned home in the winter in complete darkness with a flashlight in my hands, or when I cooked food on a camping gas burner and slept under two blankets, simple things such as light and warmth became much more valuable. I really miss walking along the deserted streets at night, watching the sunrise, going to the forest with my family, or riding along the river on a motorboat. This isn’t possible any more: you can’t go outside from midnight to 5am; there might be mines in the forests; exiting boats onto open water is prohibited.
Where do you find strength and inspiration in today’s Ukraine?
In other people. I will never cease to be amazed at how strong our nation is. How strong our will is and what incredible things we can achieve even in war conditions. How we can live our lives to the fullest in spite of injuries, how we can reopen a store when the previous one burned down, how we can love people when our entire family died. It is a great gift to have this spirit, to be Ukrainian.
What’s the first thing you’ll do once the war is over?
At 3am I’ll get in the car and go to the Azov Sea to watch the sunrise. Sunrise without war, without suffering, without air raid alarms.
What would you like your fellow Loopers to understand?
I would really like each of us to come home to a place where there is a warm dinner, family, a beloved pet, conversations about how the day went and peace of mind to fall asleep without fear of not waking up. To appreciate it to the maximum. After all, my colleagues from Ukraine have undergone a global reassessment of values. As they say, “the most expensive things in the world are not things at all.” Appreciate each day you live, do not think that you have a draft of life, that everything can be fixed and be grateful for everything you have.
More Ukraine Support Month employee spotlights: