Getting married via Ukrainian iPhone app!
Getting married via Ukrainian iPhone app!
Ukrainian digital innovation is cutting-edge. And it makes you wonder: how high could the tech sector here soar if it could grow without the threat of Russian attacks?
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Instead of the usual boring ceremony at a registry office or a church, imagine getting married anywhere in the world... All you need is the internet on your phone, and the Ukrainian app ‘Diia.’
Roman and Svitlava got married just over a month ago, becoming the first Ukrainian couple to do so online.
They were able to do this due to Diia, which started as an app to store the personal documents of Ukrainian citizens: ID cards, passports, identification numbers, driving licenses, and even diplomas.
Despite the severe challenges of a war and a minimal budget, Ukraine has emerged as a global leader in digital innovation. This remarkable achievement raises a compelling question: what could Ukraine accomplish without the constant threat of Russian attacks?
Ukraine has already pioneered numerous innovations with far-reaching implications for the future, proving its potential to drive significant global advancements in the digital sphere.
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian programmers have been making developments to simplify the life of their fellow citizens. One thing they have wanted to make easier are marriage applications and, more recently, the marriage process.
‘Diaa’ is the first app to let people get married online.
The marriage service is only a small part of Ukraine's rapid digitization. Ukrainians can now update their details for the military recruitment office, find out about Russian military attacks and weapons that could hit Ukraine, and follow the schedule for rolling power outages.
Roman Lozynskyi is a Ukrainian member of parliament from the pro-European Holos political party. As soon as the full-scale invasion began, he joined the military and fought on the front lines for over a year.
Since Lozynskyi was a soldier, he knows how hard the marriage process is on the frontlines. Marriage at the front is not a very common phenomenon, but since many are afraid of dying before they can marry their partners, many men decide to take such a step.
Roman and Svitlava Kisilova, a lecturer at Ukrainian Catholic University, met during an internship in Canada in 2016. They later became a couple. Despite being a soldier on the frontline, the ongoing war didn’t stop Roman: he proposed to Svitlana in September 2022 during a vacation in the mountains.
"We postponed the wedding because I was actively involved in the fighting. The deaths of our closest friends… naturally affected our internal feelings about the wedding,” Roman told The Counteroffensive.
By 2024, they felt they wanted to share the moment when they officially got married with their family and friends.
So they decided to do it in a groundbreaking fashion – via video call using a Ukrainian digital application.
The official part of the act with the register is quite short, as the couple only certifies that they are ready to become husband and wife.
Roman and Svitlana's ceremony lasted only 20 minutes. And even that is longer than it should have been: because the couple had some problems with the Internet connection.
"The ceremony was very emotional and long-awaited, as heavy rain forced adjustments to the plans. All the guests were rooting for the internet connection's power and verifying the bride's signature action [using face ID]. Under the umbrellas, the guests and the registrar heard our ‘I do's’," Roman said.
Roman and Svitlava’s world’s first ever online wedding ceremony, June 2024. Video by Ministry of Justice of Ukraine:
That was the first weekend that Diia’s service became available, and three couples married online simultaneously. In total, 30,000 couples have registered for online marriage, said Mykhailo Fedorov, the Minister of Digital Transformation.
When the service becomes fully active, it will be possible to avoid going to the registry office completely when you register a marriage. You will simply have to choose a free date and time and wait for a link to the ceremony via video. A digital marriage certificate will automatically appear in the Diia application. A physical document can then be ordered for delivery by mail.
Diia is not the only recent groundbreaking technological development to come out of Ukraine.
A mobile application called ‘Reserve+’ was developed for Ukrainians that are liable for military service, enabling them to quickly update their information without needing to visit a recruitment center.
On May 18, 2024, the Law on Mobilization entered into force. It stipulated that all persons liable for military service aged between 18 and 60 must update their data within 60 days.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, facing the challenge of updating millions of people’s data within two months, decided to create an application to ease the workload.
Reserve+ was launched at the end of May 2024.
Tens of thousands of people liable for military service updated their data in the app every day – the number of people who had done it by mid-July was over 2.7 million.
Electronic military ID cards, an analog of a paper document with a QR code, was introduced in the Reserve+ app as well. It has the same legal force as a paper document and can be used during document checks by the Military Commissariat, police, and Border Guard Service.
Another app launched in Ukraine in recent years is a local capital app called Kyiv Digital, “The city in a pocket”. It was launched in February 2021, and already has more than 2.7 million registered users.
The application became highly popular after the full-scale invasion began, providing Kyiv residents with air raid alerts and an offline map of shelters. Recently, it added notifications for power outages, allowing users to see hourly schedules by adding their address, whether for home or work.
Before each blackout, the app sends a notification 15 to 20 minutes in advance saying the lights should be turned off. And vice versa: 5 to 10 minutes before the end of a blackout there is a message to turn on the lights.
On top of all these, there is a special channel on Telegram and Twitter apps where Ukrainians can find out the level of danger of a Russian attack and the direction of the flight of Russian missiles. This is called the Monitor Channel. It specializes in monitoring enemy aviation, including strategic aviation, and OSINT surveillance.
“The idea of creating such a channel was born right at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, due to the lack of information about the threats to civilians,” the Monitor channel’s owner and founder told The Counteroffensive.
He cannot be named because he works with Ukrainian special services, and revealing his name could endanger his life.
At the beginning, he relied on OSINT (open source intelligence) data for his information. But over time, as he needed more accurate data, he searched for information using radio stations and people on the ground.
Every day he uses about a thousand different sources – he listens to up to ten radio stations from morning to night, as well as receiving messages from operational sources.
He works alone, but sometimes he needs help with research, so Monitor has a small team of people who specialize in different areas.
It works almost without interruption. He goes to sleep when the country is relatively quiet, when no planes are flying along the front and no enemy drones.
It is unacceptable for him not to know what kind of missile the enemy has fired at Ukrainians and from where.
His perception of his work changed dramatically after the missile attack on Serhiivka in the Odesa region in July 2022. He had been tracking five Russian bombers that launched X-22 missiles.
Tragically, those missiles struck residential buildings. He experienced the painful reality of not being able to warn people in time, as the supersonic missiles traveled too quickly – leaving only seconds, not even enough time to write a single word.
"War does not take time out. That's why I don't have weekends or vacations. As long as Russia launches missiles, I am on duty," he said.
Ukraine's IT sector was already advanced. But during wartime, it has thrived.
In the early days of the full-scale invasion, security initiatives and mutual aid organizations rapidly grew, connected through Ukrainian smartphones. People launched numerous digital projects, provided food aid, and facilitated evacuations from occupied territories.
Ukrainians are now skilled at uniting against external threats, using their digital expertise to resist.
NEWS OF THE DAY:
Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.
LOCKING RUSSIAN SOLDIERS IN: Ukraine is close to encircling Russian forces near the Seim River in the Kursk region, where up to 3,000 Russian soldiers remain, Bild reports.
On August 16, the Ukrainian Armed Forces began destroying bridges over the Seim River in the north of the Kursk region with explosions, and such actions could cut off the Russian army group, as the area is surrounded by Ukrainian territory from the west and south.
Julian Röpke, an expert in open data analysis at Bild, says that the state border between Russia and Ukraine in the south and west of the cauldron is prepared for defense. However, it will be difficult for the Russians to defend themselves if the Ukrainian forces advance from the east, the expert says.
RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH BANNED IN UKRAINE: The Ukrainian legislature, known as the Verkhovna Rada, has passed a law banning religious organizations affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC).
Ukrainian religious organizations suspected of collaborating with the Russian Orthodox Church will have nine months to sever these ties.
Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has actively supported the Kremlin's actions. In May 2022, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church with links to the “Moscow Patriarchy” tried to distance itself from the ROC, saying that it is independent of Moscow. However, numerous experts have shown that the connection with the ROC has not been completely severed.
BELARUS MOVES TROOPS TO UKRAINIAN BORDER: Belarus has moved aviation and air defense troops to its border with Ukraine, a day after Alexander Lukashenko announced he would deploy nearly a third of his military along the border, the Associated Press reports.
Lukashenko said the decision was made in response to the deployment of additional Ukrainian troops along the border. This cannot be independently verified.
Ukraine has not confirmed the deployment of Belarusian troops to the common border.
UKRAINE’S LACK OF AMMUNITION: The Ukrainian Armed Forces began experiencing a "shortage of ammunition" following the deployment of units to Kursk, the Financial Times reports. The publication, citing an unnamed senior official, writes that the defenses in the Donetsk region were "cracking" several days before the start of the Kursk operation.
Ukraine has deployed more than 10,000 troops, including many elite airborne troops and mechanized brigades, from the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions to support the Kursk operation.
Today’s Dog of War is a dog who went to drink water from an outdoor drinking bowl for homeless animals in Odesa. The sign reads: “Doing good is easy! Pour water for the animals.”
Stay safe out there.
Best,
Myroslava
It's a very different time and technology, but I am suddenly thinking back to my now 92 year old mother telling me about how advances in food canning techniques were spurred by the necessity of getting rations to soldiers in the world wars. Bravo to these innovative Ukrainians for their embrace of solutions that will soon benefit the whole world.
Such an innovative country, the marriage app is pure genius, think of the wondrous settings that can now host a marriage, or two people, separated by conflict, able to affirm their love for one another despite their geographical differences. Bravo, and Slava Ukraini!