Taras Shevchenko was in Kyiv on 25 February 1814. He was the son of Hryhoriy and Kateryna Hrushivsky-Shevchenko. He showed his intelligence by reading and writing at an early age, and he attended Imperial Academy of Arts School located in St. Petersburg. He studied art, music and literature. He did a lot of paintings and Karl Briullov discovered his talent and trained him even further. During his years of painting, he has received a lot of Silver Medals for his paintings. Later on, he became a well-known poet in Ukranian history. His most famous collection of poems was called Kobzar and it was created in 1840. His poems were mostly based on the stories of Cossacks and history of Ukraine. His view of art was mostly focused on nationalism of Ukranian people and culture. In the beginning of the 1850′s, he was sent to Novopetrovskoe fortress and banned from Ukrainian roots where he continued his art work secretly under strict Russian regime. One of his collections was called Zakhaliavni Knyzhechky. He remained the rest of his life in St. Petersbugh with the escort of national security. After the death of Tsar Nicholas, ruler of Russia, Taras Schevchenko was permitted in Ukraine but he soon after he died in March 10, 1861 and millions of Ukranians showed respect to his work after his death.

Brotherhood of Sts. Cyril and Methodius

Brotherhood of Sts. Cyril and Methodius consisted a group of religious people who were trying to adopt a Christian belief during their everyday lives. The people were wealthy and far- sighted who thought that the future would be hard for their people if there were no changed. They tried to keep the organization secret because of the strict ruling back at that time. One of their well-known members was Taras Shevchenko who was idealist and educated enough to give his support to this organization. The organization leader was Mykola Kostamarov who was born in 1817, fought for freedom, independence and uniqueness of Ukranian nation. The Brotherhood of Sts. Cyril and Methodius wanted each Slavic state to have their own language, own culture and not dependent to one big regime. They wanted everyone to be equal and they did try to make a lot of reforms to get rid of the ruling strategy on their nation and they wanted to be unlike their neighbors such as Poland and Russia because of their willing for independence and freedom. They considered the city Kyiv as the center of their nation, and private organization. While they were trying to do their actions and reforms secretly, Taras Schevchenko’s support had been realized and he had been sent to Siberia. The organization was a great work which influenced many Ukranians to gain their freedom after those years.

Andriy Shevchenko

Andriy Shevchenko is probably the most well-known Ukranian through-out the world recently. He was born on September 29, 1976 in a city called Dvirkivschyna. He spent most of his life in the capital Kyiv. His talent was seen in a youth tournament and he was transferred to Dynamo Kyiv. In the age of 14, he participated in the Ian Rush Cup located in Wales and he became the goal scorer and many well-known clubs sent their scout teams to watch his games randomly. He started his professional football carreer with Dynamo Kyiv with the training of his formal trainer Valeri Lobanovsky. He soon become on of the most talented player of the team and he was invited to participate at the Ukrainian Olympic team. His career in Ukraine consisted of five Ukrainian Championships and three Ukrainian Cups which are a very big number for a short amount of time. His first participation in a very big tournament was in 1994 when he played a UEFA champions league game against Spartak in Moscow. He was only 18 at that time and being a player in a champion’s league at the age of 18 should be appreciated for his courage and talent. He scored his first goal in an international game against the greatest team of Germany Bayern Munchen, at the age of 18. In 1997, he scored a hat-trick, which means scoring 3 goals in a game, against the one of the greatest teams of Spain Barcelona. Dynamo Kyiv won the game 4-0 and after this game his talent was soon discovered by an Italy’s one of the greatest teams A.C Milan in Milano. The team agreed to pay a young player around $26 million which is a huge amount for a very young player who only previously played in his country. He is currently the Ukrainian best national team scorer and he plays with Veronin in the national team as the strikers. In 1998, he becomes the top scorer in Champions league which is considered the toughest tournament in the world. In 2004, Andriy Shevchenko was chosen as the European Footballer of the Year and received the golden shoe. The living legend of football, Abedi Pelé, gave a speech in which he thought he was one of the top 125 greatest living footballers in 2004. Last summer, Russian petroleum millionaire Abramovich, president of Chelsea, offered his club 50 million Euros but the club refused to lose him. A.C. Milan and Italy President Silvio Berlusconi, have signed a contract with Shevchenko to keep him with A.C Milan until 2009. He can be considered as one of the best strikers in the world according to my observations.

26 April 1986 Chornobyl ( Chernobyl)

Chernobyl was an accident in 1986 which was the result of mismanagement and wrong design. Steam explosion resulted in %5 of the radiation to be spread to the atmosphere. 28 people soon died in four months after the explosion from radiation and/or thermal burns. Seven years after the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown in the United States, a much larger and major nuclear incident happened in Chernobyl in the former USSR on April 26, 1986. Although both of these incidents could be traced to human and design errors, to a large extent, there is a great difference between these two nuclear accidents. In the Three Mile Island incident there were no injuries or deaths involved. The problem was contained within the plant. No excessive amount of radioactive gases leaked out from the nuclear plant. Later investigations revealed that no contamination whatsoever of plants, animals, and the environment within the radius of the plant was in any way related to the nuclear accident. At Chernobyl, massive damage to plants, animals, and the environment within the radius of the power plant were affected. Thirty-one people died in the incident mainly from fires resulting from the reactivity power increase accident. Radioactive gases leaked out of the plant causing contamination and resulting from the evacuation of close to 135, 000 people. A one square mile of pine forest within the plant had to be buried as further preventive measure. There was even evidence of delayed health effects from people contaminated with the radioactive gases.

Traditionally, Ukraine always was a technical region of the USSR. No wonder, the IT education was and still is one of the most popular and respective education in the region. Such well-known Ukrainian universities as Kyiv National Technical University, Donetsk National Technical University etc. as well as new establishments with more innovative approach for IT specialists education, such as Donetsk State Institute of Artificial Intelligence and others, educate a new prospective generation of young IT professionals, ambitious and purposeful.

It’s obvious, Ukrainian students win in international contests, and show true professionalism and ability to enter a business life immediately, hence, to play the first fiddle in the labour market. As the latest example, one can remember students of Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics that became first place winners of the International Web Development Contest (I.C.W.D.I.C. 2005) held by XITEX Software Company in spring 2005.

That is why governments of European countries encourage Ukrainian programmers to come and to work there. Germany is the best example of a country that understands all pros and cons of Ukrainian IT professional, thus it’s the country that sees its benefits of employing Ukrainian programmers.

Another one important factor is the cost of labour. In Ukraine, usual hourly rates for programmers are $10-$15. Although they are little bigger than Indian ones, they are still 1.5 times lesser than Russian ones and several times lesser than American or European costs. If you consider the high level of professionalism and responsibility, then you add a European mind and time zone, plus a fluent English of the most of IT people, you realize that Ukraine is that happy medium each company looks for. Hence, many companies that outsource have already realized it.
<H3>Ukraine’s Prospects</H3>

Due to the Market Visio’s research, the volume of Ukrainian IT-services export in 2003 was estimated to be $70M, 40% more in comparison with 2002. The market prospects for 2005 were to be $150M; that is three times more in three years.

There are about 300 public companies that work for export. They are located mainly in big cities such as Kyiv, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk etc. There are also a huge amount of groups of professionals who are mainly engaged in export on a level of freelancers. The total number of IT specialists engaged in IT-export services was about 10,000 in 2003 and grew considerably during next years.

Everything mentioned above shows that Ukraine has great prospects to become and equal player to the most known leaders of the market. Its well-developed IT infrastructure, level of services, and professionalism of programmers made Ukrainian companies able to compete for complex and complicated projects with other well-known developers. There are several companies that invest in their own software solutions and market them internationally with success. However, all of them are engaged into smaller or bigger software development projects as subcontractors.

The next step of Ukrainian gait into the world IT market seems to be a wide establishment of offshore development centers based on currently existing software development companies. Prerequisites are obvious:
# <OL type=1> Ukrainian IT companies have whole infrastructure required to develop reliable custom application and deliver it in time.
# The gross yearly expenditure per one programmer will vary from $20,000 to $30,000.
# Ukraine’s time zone is GMT +02:00. Hence, all programmers and project managers will be available on daytime for any European company.

The only thing remains to be done, though. Ukrainian IT companies are making only their first steps in self-promotion. The more professional they become in this field, the more obvious it would be that Ukraine becomes a competitive player on the world software outsourcing market.