This commentary was written by Freight Caviar founder Paul-Bernard Jaroslawski. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of FreightWaves or its affiliates.
By Paul-Bernard Jaroslawski
Before the war, Ukraine was home to thousands of freight brokers and dispatchers who worked in the U.S. market. I spent three years from 2017-2020 managing an outsourced U.S. freight brokerage in Kyiv.
Ukrainian men are not allowed to leave due to martial law, but many women living in Kyiv have left the country. Currently, they are working remotely all over the world.
Recently, I spoke with Owais Khan, a Pakistani man who was living in Kyiv and working as a freight broker in the U.S. market when the conflict began. During our conversation, he recounted his experiences when Russia invaded Ukraine.
On Feb. 24, Owais Khan was contacted by a friend around 5 a.m.
He had gotten home from work a couple of hours earlier at 3 a.m. Because of the time difference in Ukraine, freight brokers working in the U.S. market typically work from 15:00 (7 a.m. CST) until at least midnight (4 p.m. CST).
He had been asleep for just over an hour when his friend woke him, and he was annoyed by having his sleep disturbed. Unbeknownst to him at that moment, Russian troops had begun their attack on Kyiv, and the war had begun.
Outside his apartment, shops were full of people and queues. “Every person you saw on the road would have three bags and a child,” he said.
He knew there was panic in the city. Shaken by the situation, he and his four roommates decided to stay in their apartment for the time being.
Later that day, they formulated a plan to flee Kyiv that evening. The plan was to reach Ternopil in western Ukraine as the Pakistani embassy had advised them to do. But on the way there, the Russian army bombed the road. Khan and his friends decided to go straight to the border with Slovakia instead of going to Ternopil.
After almost two days of waiting at the border, they crossed to Slovakia from the border at Uzhhorod.
Once in Slovakia, Khan traveled to Austria, Germany, France and Spain, taking 16 days to make it to Portugal. From Portugal, he flew to Dubai, eventually to Karachi, then to Islamabad.
Khan is now working remotely in Pakistan for CDL 1000, the same company he worked for in Kyiv. When asked if he was working from home, he told me that Pakistan’s internet is not good and electricity is available only 14 hours a day, so he rents office space in a commercial area with better electricity and internet, but noise there is an issue.
He also told me he needs to buy an air conditioner, and “I need to buy UPS [uninterruptible power supply] for electricity,” he said. Because of the high overhead, he is considering moving to Dubai, where he could work a day job and then broker freight on the U.S. market in the evenings.
Final thoughts
Khan is optimistic about the future and enthusiastic about his journey as a U.S. freight broker.
“The market is very different from when I came into this field. It keeps changing and it keeps rotating. And I think that is the fun thing about this field.”