Like so many Ukrainians, Dima Shvets was awoken final Thursday by the sound of bombs. At round 5AM native time, Russian troops started shelling key targets in his nation, escalating a army assault that had begun eight years in the past right into a full-fledged invasion. As air raid sirens rang out in cities throughout Ukraine, Shvets reached out to pals, household, and colleagues to seek out out what was occurring.

“The first two days were super tough,” Shvets tells The Verge, and he and people round him have been compelled to adapt to this new and terrifying actuality. On the one hand, the whole lot they knew had modified eternally; on the opposite, life needed to proceed — there was no different alternative.

For Shvets, continuity meant his firm: a startup based mostly in Ukraine known as Reface that makes a well-liked face-swapping app of the identical title. As CEO, Shvets watched over Slack and Telegram channels because the agency’s workers, a lot of whom have been already working remotely, headed to bomb shelters and basements for defense in opposition to the preliminary bombardment.

Ksenia Maslova, a member of the corporate’s comms workforce, says she discovered her approach to her native subway station in central Kyiv on Friday and was there till Monday with round 50 others. “We had our sleeping bags, warm clothes and other emergency things in — we call them — ‘anxious bags,’” Masolva tells The Verge. “It was crazy because even though we had food with us, we didn’t know if we’d be able to come out again on Monday.”

Photo by Genya Savilov/AFP by way of Getty Images

As the times handed and the preliminary shock of the invasion subsided, workers started to maneuver additional afield, maintaining a tally of reviews of Russian troop actions as they did. Some headed for the border and plenty of to family and friends within the West, the place combating is much less intense. “The war forced us to split up,” says Shvets, who’s himself now in Western Ukraine.

A number of members of Reface’s workforce members rapidly volunteered to hitch Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces, a army department of civilian reservists that’s been finishing up auxiliary duties for the military: transporting meals and gas, making Molotov cocktails, and organising armed roadblocks. And because the Reface workforce shared information of those departures, Shvets started to consider what his firm might do to assist the struggle effort.

“We told our people they shouldn’t work now,” he says. “We should work on the freedom and health of our country instead.”

With a little bit over 200 staff, Reface is hardly a tech large, but it surely’s a widely known startup in Ukraine’s once-booming IT sector. Despite threats of struggle and the pandemic, Ukraine’s tech exports grew by 20 percent in 2020, and Reface itself (previously generally known as Doublicat) has each won awards and topped app download charts world wide since its launch.

The app makes use of machine studying to swap customers’ faces into GIFs and movies of films and memes — primarily producing domesticated deepfakes for leisure on social media. And whereas that important performance nonetheless stays, the Reface workforce has since conscripted its app into Ukraine’s wider data struggle.

The first step, explains Shvets, was to leverage the app’s recognition in Russia. Working generally from bomb shelters and basements, he and his colleagues compiled a video that confirmed the invasion because it had occurred, utilizing the identical clips and pictures that have been circulating on social media. In some methods, it felt like work as regular, says Masolva, but it surely was a routine carried out beneath extraordinary circumstances. “Sometimes someone took a task and then texted the channel: ‘Oh, sorry, I need to go to my bomb shelter because there are sirens,’” says Maslova. “And we would say, ‘Okay, okay, sure, just tell us whether you’re safe.’”

After the video and accompanying textual content have been ready, Reface’s workforce despatched out thousands and thousands of push notifications to the app’s customers in Russia and world wide, calling on viewers to hitch protests and stand with Ukraine.

Image: Reface

Daria Kravets, Reface’s comms supervisor, says key motivation was to achieve Russian viewers by bypassing conventional channels of communication. Twitter and Facebook have been restricted in Russia, and the state has gone to nice efforts to restrict information of the struggle from reaching the individuals. “We understand Russians don’t have access to the real situation here because independent media is blocked,” Kravets tells The Verge. “But we have 5 million users [in Russia], and we sent out 2 million push notifications. We continue to send them. And in that push notification, we added footage of the real situation, and we encouraged people to go protest because that’s the only way to change the situation.”

It’s not possible to know the affect of such work, however rallying resistance is actually not a trivial matter. Analysts say Russia’s media blackout was a key a part of the country’s military strategy: to strike quick and maintain territory earlier than home politics might disrupt an unpopular invasion or Western powers might stir themselves to assist. Ukraine has stymied these efforts on two fronts: first, by providing stiff opposition to Russian troops on the bottom and, second, by flooding social media with memes, pictures, and movies that emphasize the brutality of the invasion and the bravery and humor of bizarre Ukrainians.

Image: The Verge

For Reface, push notifications have been simply the beginning, and the corporate has since given its app a patriotic makeover. The app’s icon now exhibits the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag, whereas a banner on the welcome display tells customers “Ukraine Needs Your Support,” directing them to donate to the struggle effort. Most conspicuously, Reface has added a brand new character to its roster of face-swapping stars: Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has grow to be a key determine within the nation’s media struggle, sharing defiant movies to counter Russian misinformation about his give up. In Reface’s app, anybody can place their face over Zelenskyy’s as he walks with troopers and addresses the nation, telling viewers: “Slava Ukraini!”’ — “Glory to Ukraine!”

As Shvets places it: “Before, the main heroes on the app were Jack Sparrow, Hulk, and Iron Man. But today’s heroes are our people, our military forces, and our president Zelenskyy.”

Shvets says that up till the second that bombs began falling, he hadn’t ever thought his world would appear to be this. He says he solely needed to begin Reface to make enjoyable instruments for creators. “Frankly speaking, I could never have imagined doing this with the app,” he says.

But like so many Ukrainians, Reface and its workforce have tailored their abilities to what they are saying is an existential menace to their nation and freedom. Other members of the tech business have made related efforts — volunteering for the so-called “cyber resistance” and agitating on social media. Despite these new issues, Shvets is adamant that Reface will live on no matter occurs subsequent with the invasion. As effectively as sending push notifications to Russians, he’s been busy securing servers exterior of Ukraine to maintain the app working no matter occurs subsequent. “Our app is not dead; it’s developing, and it’s going to be fine,” he says.

More instantly, although, Reface’s workforce members say that adapting the app, even in comparatively small methods, has given them a way of goal. “Fear was replaced by the feeling that I am not alone and surrounded by such […] focused and brave people,” says Kravets.

As Maslova places it, throughout occasions of struggle, everybody has to seek out their area of interest. “If you have a medical degree, you go and help medical institutions,” she says. “If you have communication skills, you try and prepare these texts.”

When requested how she feels about Reface’s new route, she pauses for a second after which offers a heartfelt sigh. “United,” she says. “It’s the most important thing. And useful. We have our own piece of the battleground.”