Ukrainians working for high-tech Western companies are rallying to help their besieged homeland by cracking down on misinformation sites, encouraging Russians to turn against their leadership and speeding up medical aid.
Through online campaigns, they seek to persuade Internet security companies such as Cloudflare Inc, Alphabet Inc’s Google and Amazon.com Inc. to take more action to counter the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Companies should try to isolate Russia as much as possible,” said Oleksiy Oriesco, an American-Ukrainian software engineer at Google. “Sanctions are not enough.”
He is one of nine Ukrainian-born Silicon Valley activists who have responded to Kiev’s call for a voluntary “IT (Information Technology) Army”.
Many companies have cut ties with Russia over sanctions, but activists are calling for more.
In particular, they call on cybersecurity companies to abandon their Russian customers, especially those who leak misinformation. If this happens, these misinformation transmitters will be more vulnerable to online attacks.
Igor Seletsky, CEO of software company CloudLinux in Palo Alto, has called on cybersecurity company Cloudflare to abandon the protection of a number of Russian websites.
“Given that even Switzerland took a stand, I think it would be important if Cloudflare did the same,” he wrote in an email to company executives.
Cloudflare has announced that it has abandoned some of its customers due to sanctions and has begun examining accounts contained in Seletsky’s email, adding that it is proceeding cautiously because the severance of ties could disrupt customer security.
Vlad Golosuk escaped the bombs that fell outside his paternal home last week and is worried about his Ukrainian colleagues who have not given signs of life in recent days. He appeals to a number of companies to help put pressure on Russia.
Several of them, including cybersecurity and web hosting companies, said they would do what they could. Some have dismissed or are considering sending Russian customers, according to responses from Brightest Minds CEO Vlad Golosuk.
Philip Lipnyakov, who works for the Spanish delivery app Glovo and has backed efforts to shut down Russian websites, says he hopes the “IT (Information Technology) war” will protect Ukraine.
Internet service interruptions will send “a message from the average citizen to high-ranking officials that ‘Uh, this is unacceptable,'” he says.
Interruption of internet services
Employees of Google, including people of Ukrainian descent, have signed an internal letter to CEO Sundar Pitsay asking for more assistance to Ukraine and modifying services such as Maps and advertising tools, according to a Google software engineer who did not want to be named.
Google declined to comment. In recent days, it has blocked Russia’s state media from advertising and distribution tools and tightened security measures for users in Ukraine.
Activists are also looking for ways to disrupt the lives of Russian citizens in order to weaken Russia’s internal support for the war.
An online complaint filed by Stas Matvienko, chief executive of the Los Angeles-based online delivery company Allset, calls on US providers of entertainment, payment, dating and other applications to block access to Russia.
The Ukrainian humanitarian organization Nova Ukraine of Silicon Valley invited Amazon to donate working hours and space for storage and packaging of material shipped by its aircraft to Ukraine’s neighboring countries, such as Poland.
Amazon declined to comment. In recent days, he announced that he would donate up to $ 10 million to aid organizations in Ukraine.
Source: AMPE
Source: Capital
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