Ukraine's deputy prime minister and head of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, has been very active on his social networks since the Russian invasion of his country began a few days ago. He has managed to draw attention to the situation in his country and on his Twitter he seems to have great faith that the world's technology giants can help end this conflict with different methods of pressure.
It must be remembered that, in addition to the arms race, there are different forms of pressure that have been created in recent days by various countries of the world against Russia. The economic and diplomatic offensive against Moscow aims for the Putin government to end this war.
Technology companies can also do something and the Ukrainian government seems to be convinced of the need for them to get involved with blockades and closures in Russia, to get Putin to give in to avoid an isolated Russia. In fact, many multinational companies have closed their doors in the country, leaving thousands of people without work.
These days, Minister Fedorov has already accumulated some achievements, such as Elon Musk announcing the activation of Starlink in the country (although this measure is not very useful); has caught the attention of cryptocurrency users (and soon of lovers of NFT assets) receiving millionaire donations (yesterday they amounted to more than 50 million dollars, according to information from the minister himself.
The Crypto Fund of Ukraine raised $50M in crypto in a week to support #Ukraine 👊🏻 An incredible unity before Putin's encroachment on freedom and democracy. Aiming for $100M this week. We WILL win! 🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine
— Mykhailo Fedorov March 4, 2022
It has also gotten Google to agree to censor Russian public media on YouTube and the Play Store. It also asked Apple to close its Store to prevent the download of apps. The Cupertino company has not said anything about this, but it has stopped the sale of its products and has eliminated the applications of RT and Sputnik, media related to the Putin government.
In addition, this week he had "a call with the digital ministers of the EU countries that have agreed to block Russian TV channels and IT companies" from the country.
A review of Fedorov's requests
The deputy prime minister and head of Digital Transformation of Ukraine was not so active on his social networks until the last few days. Now every so often he tweets at big companies in the technology sector. He seems convinced that isolating Russia technologically (not only the government, but the country's citizens), could be the solution to end the conflict in this global world.
In his tweets, he has asked various companies to stop providing their services in Russia. Yesterday, Friday, the last post went to Jeff Bezos and Amazon (although now the CEO is Andy Jassy, but he is not as popular as Bezos), asking him to close his services in Russia.
@JeffBezos @Amazon , bloody Russian aggression continues. The world must combine efforts against Russian missiles and tanks bombing kindergartens and hospitals in Ukraine. Stop the war – stop your services for UK! pic.twitter.com/Yu7WuNp3ps
— Mykhailo Fedorov March 4, 2022
For its part, SAP has stopped selling its products in Russia, but for the minister this is not enough. And it has publicly requested that it also stop supporting SAP products already installed in the country. As can be seen in the Twitter account, he has also requested this blockade of Oracle and the financial companies Visa and Mastercard, which could affect Russia even more economically, to put more pressure on future decisions of his government. In the latter case, three days ago Visa and Mastercard announced the blocking of several Russian financial institutions from their network, which did not completely block their services.
Fedorov has also taken to his Twitter to share the decision by Nick Clegg (the former European political hotshot who is now, as part of Meta, chairman of global affairs) that Facebook is going to block profiles that spread disinformation or propaganda. . We must remember how the creator of Telegram already remembered that these convulsive moments can be used to spread hate
We've already noticed @Meta decisions on blocking Russian propagandists and media outlets. @nickclegg, thanks for your actions and this very first step in countering the bloody military attack against Ukraine. There is no place for war criminals in the Metaverse. https://t.co/IbB0NmQD5A
— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) February 27, 2022
