The Ronnie Apteker interview - his life in Ukraine

TechCentral

The 24th of February 2022 is a day Ronnie Apteker – and millions of his countrymen in his adopted home of Ukraine – will never forget.
Apteker woke up early that morning – as millions of others did – to the sound of bombs and missiles raining down. After months of military build-up along Ukraine’s eastern flank, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin had ordered a full-scale invasion.
In this special edition of the TechCentral Show, we chat to Apteker – a pioneer in South Africa’s internet industry – about his life in Ukraine amid the ongoing war.
Apteker has a storied career as co-founder of Internet Solutions, one of South Africa’s first and most successful internet service providers. He is also well known as a producer and promoter of movies, including Material and Beyond the River.
In 2015 Apteker bought an apartment in Kyiv and started a new life in the city, attracted by the country’s diverse tech scene and its incredibly beauty.
He had established a new and promising life for himself in Ukraine – he married a local woman, Marta, with whom he has a young boy (affectionately called “the Bunster”). Both Marta and the Bunster are now refugees from the war, living in Poland.
Never in a million years did Apteker expect he would be caught up in a major conflict, never mind the biggest land war in Europe since World War 2.
Today his life involves moving between Poland and Kyiv, where he has friends as well as business interests in the tech sector which he continues to nurture despite the chaos caused by Putin’s aggression.
In this sometimes emotionally raw interview, Apteker tells TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod about why he left South Africa to go and live in Ukraine, how the war started (he woke up early one morning to missiles raining down on Kyiv), what it’s like to live in a warzone, and how he’s coping with the daily hardships caused by the conflict.
Apteker, who is known for his wicked sense of humour – in a previous life he was even briefly a stand-up comedian – admits it’s been exceptionally difficult to stay positive about the future, but that he’s managed to keep going even us Putin’s war machine grinds on.
In the interview, Apteker chats about his daily life now and what it entails; the US election, and why Ukrainians fear another Donald Trump presidency; the new documentary film about the war that he’s been working on; his passion for moviemaking; and why love is the most important thing in the world.
Don’t miss the interview.