Why Luke Skywalker announces Russian missiles incoming
The developer behind Ukraine's air alert app — built in a matter of days to save lives — dreams of the day his biggest accomplishment will be a thing of the past.
At the bottom of this page: Latest news at this hour Kyiv stockpiles food and water for emergencies… Witkoff and Kushner in Kyiv for the first time… Ukraine lost $1.2 billion to fraud in 2024… Fallen soldier became father, update…
Editor’s Note: Because of Russia’s new tactics against the capital, air raid alerts in Kyiv now come in two levels: yellow for drone threats and red for missiles. In practice, though, it amounts to the same thing:
Meanwhile, our team is preparing for another winter: stocking up on food and water, working out backup power. The best thing you can do for our newsroom right now is upgrade your subscription. OUR LEAD STORY:KYIV, Ukraine – One day Stepan received a letter. A young woman thanked him for the app. She wrote that as soon as she received the alert, she went down to the shelter; at that moment, she couldn’t hear the siren outside. And when she came out of the shelter, the building was destroyed, and so was her apartment. “At that moment I felt like we had done something good,” Stepan recalled. The war began on a Wednesday, and by Friday, Stepan Tanasiichuk was already taking his family to Western Ukraine, away from the fighting that was rapidly closing in on Kyiv. By Saturday, he had already begun work to resist the enemy. “We created a news feed on the National Bank’s website called ‘StopWar,’ and the payment details were for donations to the armed forces,” Stepan recalled.
But his greatest contribution was yet to come. Like millions of other Ukrainians, Stepan had to instantly find his place in the country’s defense. His Air Alert app, created in a matter of days, became the primary digital tool for survival for millions of people. Behind this phenomenal success lies not a commercial triumph but a colossal responsibility, where a mistake or a delay in notification is measured in human lives. It’s a testament to how war erases professional boundaries and transforms familiar mobile technologies into a lifeline for millions of people. The app is especially critical now that a new wave of Russian strikes has exposed an even deadlier threat: due to an acute shortage of air defense systems and interceptors like the Patriot, ballistic missiles are increasingly detonating in Ukrainian cities even before the public sirens sound.
Stepan says his invention was spurred on by the chaos unfolding in the first days of the full-scale invasion. On the third day, he began to notice posts on social media from acquaintances and friends saying they often couldn’t hear the public air raid sirens. He began to worry about his loved ones. Stepan had been working in software development for about 20 years and ran his own company, Stfalcon. It immediately occurred to him to develop an app that would alert residents to danger by sounding an alarm on their phones. Without putting off the idea until the next morning, he posted about his idea in a work chat.
“People weren’t sitting in the office going about their usual business; they were scattering in all directions. Some went to the villages, others tried to evacuate. Everyone was on the move, and I didn’t expect them to get back to work right away,” Stepan recalled. But six people from the team quickly agreed. “By Sunday, we had already assigned roles and discussed the next steps,” he says. A few days later, the team ran into their first major obstacle: if a phone is in ‘Do Not Disturb’ or ‘Sleep’ mode, the app cannot send notifications. Stepan racked his brain trying to figure out how to solve this, as it was crucial for people to hear the signal in time. He found the solution on his own smartphone. Stepan remembered the Ajax app — an alarm system he had been using that sent emergency alerts capable of waking a person even when the phone was in silent mode or set to ‘Do Not Disturb.’ He had woken up in the middle of the night more than once because of these jarring alerts and knew just how effective they were. If the Ajax team had already figured out how to bypass the limitations of mobile operating systems, that same expertise could be used for missile threat alerts.
Without hesitation, he found the contact information for Ajax Systems’ engineers and learned of another obstacle: Breaking through the ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode would require special permission in an Apple developer account. “To get it, you have to convince Apple why you need such permission. And it would take some time for them to review the request. Well, missiles are flying, people are dying — we don’t have time,” Stepan recalled. He suggested that Ajax publish the app through their developer account, but they surprised him by offering to join the development effort instead. “Everyone wanted to do something to somehow stop this war — not necessarily to win, but at least to be part of the process. We handed over part of the development to their team.” From there, everything moved at breakneck speed. Everyone felt the weight of the responsibility that they had taken on and the urgency of the situation. The State Emergency Service and the Ministry of Digital Transformation were brought in, and some regional military administrations began to join the effort. “On March 1, we issued our first real air raid alert.” Soon, the team ran into another obstacle. “I posted a link to the app on social media and asked people to sign up to test it. Someone shared that link further. It went viral, and we unexpectedly received a huge influx of users that we hadn’t anticipated. By evening, we already had something like 100,000 or 140,000 users. We were stunned.” By that time, the team realized they couldn’t handle the load. “We sat down to completely overhaul the mechanism for sending out these alerts. After a night of work, everything was updated.” Meanwhile, the app’s popularity had spiralled out of control. The media began reporting that such an app had been created, and more and more users started downloading it. Stepan realized that this avalanche couldn’t be stopped and that there was no point in delaying the official release. The Ministry of Digital Transformation and the State Emergency Service announced that the “Air Raid Alert” app had gone live in Ukraine, and major publications had already officially reported on it. “We got a million installs in an hour,” Stepan recalled. “We were impressed.”
Public warning systems were installed in Ukraine as far back as the 1970s and 1980s, but they weren’t fully up-to-date when the war erupted. They’ve been gradually modernized since then, and Kyiv now operates modern public warning systems similar to those in the U.S. and Europe, with two-person teams manning the systems and relaying the siren to loudspeakers in the streets when danger is incoming. Once the app was launched, these teams also gained access to the app’s software and began issuing alerts through it simultaneously with the loudspeakers. “It happened that our alerts arrived a few minutes earlier. That’s because all they had to do was press a single button, and the alert was sent out. But to send out traditional alerts, they had to go through a whole series of procedures, which took several minutes. Because of this, they decided on their own to first send an alert through the app and then begin their traditional announcement procedure,” Stepan explained. There were also a few mishaps. The app has several different types of alerts, including one for radiation danger, which has a louder sound. Russia has repeatedly threatened Ukraine with nuclear weapons. Once, the operators on duty got confused and accidentally triggered this alert. “People there were really scared, because this is no joke,” Stepan said. After that, the team reconfigured the buttons to prevent such accidents. In the first few months after the launch, the team actively developed the app’s features, adding new types of alerts (street fighting, artillery shelling, etc.). They added the ability to subscribe to multiple regions—meaning one can get alerts for areas where their loved ones live, in addition to their own region.
“There are still some complex features that we’re adding gradually, such as heightened danger alerts and certain unusual alerts. Specifically, we’re currently adding ballistic alerts to notifications because we have heightened danger alerts for missiles and UAVs, but none for ballistic threats. We’ve discussed with the Air Force a way to implement ballistic alerts,” Stepan said. The team also boosts users’ morale with some tongue-in-cheek features. One striking example involved Operation “Spiderweb”, when Ukraine struck five military airfields deep behind Russian lines and put strategic bombers out of commission. At that time, the developers added an ironic Easter egg to the map: animated trucks driving toward the enemy’s border.
For the English-language version of the app, the developers enlisted the voice of Mark Hamill, the immortal Luke Skywalker from “Star Wars.” Now, the voice of a Jedi warns foreigners and diplomats in Ukraine about the threat of missile strikes, artillery shelling, or radiation hazards, and at the end of the alert, with that iconic intonation, reminds them: “The air alert is over. May the Force be with you.” 
All-clear alert voiced by Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker, Star Wars). Almost YouTube channel (@almostco) Although Stepan developed an app that has saved countless lives, he speaks about those early days of Air Alert — when he says he felt “like a celebrity” — with a tinge of sadness. “I thought I’d brag to my grandchildren that Grandpa once made a product like this, but over time, that feeling has faded a bit,” he says. Now, he can’t help but hope for the chance to send the one notification that will effectively pull the plug on Air Alert: “The war is over. Delete our app.” Interested in reading more stories of how air alert works? Check these out: Nighttime with Ukraine’s drone hunting teams by Myroslava Tanska-Vikulova, William Glover Weiss, and Oleksandr Matviienko LISTEN: The sounds of war we hear at night by Anastasiia Kryvoruchenko Editor’s Note: Because of Russia’s new tactics against the capital, air raid alerts in Kyiv now come in two levels: yellow for drone threats and red for missiles. In practice, though, it amounts to the same thing:
Meanwhile, our team is preparing for another winter: stocking up on food and water, working out backup power. Support us! THE LATEST NEWS AT THIS HOUR:By: Mariana Stadnyk Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands. KYIV STOCKPILES FOOD AND WATER FOR EMERGENCIES: In preparation for winter, food and water is stocked up in Kyiv for use during prolonged electricity outages and other emergencies. The supplies will be prioritized for people with low income or in difficult life circumstances. Kyiv will be able to provide hot meals to 25 thousand people and purchase 20 thousand food kits for use in emergencies. The stockpiles can help victims of emergencies, provide for workers involved in emergency rescue and other urgent operations, and at points of invincibility, where people gather during blackouts. WITKOFF AND KUSHNER IN KYIV FOR THE FIRST TIME: U.S. peace envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner visited Kyiv for the first time this Sunday. They came to Ukraine after their third visit to Moscow on Saturday, during which they held three-hour talks with Putin. Russia halted its strikes on Kyiv for the visit, although other Ukrainian cities were attacked. The U.S. envoys held talks with Zelenskyy, Ukrainian officials and national security advisers from the UK, Germany, and France. The parties spoke positively about the negotiations and expressed readiness for further trilateral talks. However, there was no sign of any significant breakthrough. UKRAINE LOST $1.2 BILLION TO FRAUD IN 2024: Internal government audits revealed fraud, waste, and mismanagement in Ukraine’s military procurement system, The New York Times reported. Companies got contracts without proving they could deliver the weapons. There were rarely repercussions for failing to deliver the weapons and overcharging for them. According to the audits, new deals were granted to seven contractors despite open criminal investigations for fraud, failures to fulfil earlier deals, and proof of corruption. 18 companies got new deals after failing to perform previous ones, including six companies that did not deliver on a single contract. Overpaying for weapons when lower bids were available cost about $126 million. FALLEN SOLDIER BECAME FATHER, UPDATE: Lyudmila Moriak, whose story was covered by The Counteroffensive, gave birth to her son Oles Moriak. Oles is the son of Serhii, a soldier who died in 2024. Serhii froze his sperm to allow for the possibility of IVF. Lyudmila faced legal difficulties while trying to do IVF with Serhii’s reproductive material. The couple wasn’t married, and the right to the late partner’s reproductive cells is not automatically granted to the common-law wife by Ukrainian law. CAT OF CONFLICT:Mariana’s boyfriend’s kitten Emily is now conquering new heights in his apartment.
Stay safe out there! Best,
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