A government-backed vision for cross-border business
At the very end of 2012, together with my Moscow partners, we began developing a project that became one of the most ambitious systems of that period — Lugansk.Ru, built under an official cooperation agreement between the government of Moscow and the government of the Lugansk Region in Ukraine.
For almost two years — 2012 to 2014 — the project became my world.
As a team lead, developer, and business manager, I worked at the edge of my abilities every single day.
At that time, it was the most complex project I had ever built.
The goal was clear yet immense in scale:
help people and businesses find each other across regions and industries.
A business-to-business ecosystem
The platform allowed companies to register, create profiles, specify industries, select their location, and publish:
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🟩 offers (what they had — coal, grain, steel, services)
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🟥 requests (what they needed — sugar, metal products, logistics, partners)
Businesses in other regions could immediately see relevant posts and respond.
Everything operated through an interactive regional map — a bold vision for its time and far more intuitive than dropdowns.
Users navigated opportunities visually rather than through static forms.
The platform functioned like a massive, structured business-focused Craigslist, but with government backing and real economic intent.
What the project revealed
The development of Lugansk.Ru exposed an important reality:
👉 Most businesses had websites — but very few actually conducted business online.
The platform aimed to bridge this gap, bringing genuine economic activity into digital space rather than merely digital presence.
It was a modest, but meaningful attempt to modernize cross-border business communication.
What lived on inside QRaway
Even though the project never launched, many of its ideas became foundational for QRaway:
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📍 Geolocation natively built into the database
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🗺️ Region-based sorting and spatial filters
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📊 Coordinate-level queries and mapping logic
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🔗 Structured discovery patterns between business entities
But one concept became especially transformative.
The birth of Intent Signals
Lugansk.Ru introduced a simple but powerful mechanic:
Raise a flag → show what you’re open to → let others connect.
This idea later evolved into QRaway’s Intent Signals, now used across two domains:
✔ Personal profiles — “I’m open to…”
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💬 conversation
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💘 dating
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🤝 partnership
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🎒 travel-buddy
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🎤 collaboration
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🌱 something new
✔ Business spaces — “We’re looking for…”
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📦 suppliers
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🚚 logistics
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🎨 design help
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💰 investors
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📣 marketing partners
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🛠️ contributors
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💡 ideas welcome
The DNA of this mechanic started exactly here.
The day everything changed
Right before the project was scheduled for presentation and approval — the 2014 war began.
In an instant, the entire political and economic landscape collapsed.
Cross-border cooperation froze.
All agreements halted.
I was told:
“Do whatever you want with it.”
And that was the end of Lugansk.Ru.
A nearly finished, massive two-year platform — gone overnight.
What remains
Lugansk.Ru never launched.
But it became a turning point.
It was the most complex project of that period, pushing my architectural, technical, and managerial skills further than anything before it.
QRaway later surpassed everything in scale — but the road to it began here.
👉 Lugansk.Ru was the peak of that era — and the foundation for what would eventually grow into QRaway.
