Ukraine: Spam Website To Reach Millions Of Russians

A Norwegian computer expert has created a website enabling anyone to send an email about the war in Ukraine to up to 150 Russian email addresses at a time, so that Russian people have a chance to hear the truth about the invasion of Ukraine that their government is hiding.

All over Russia email inboxes are pinging with real news about Ukraine and often millions of messages are being received with the same intriguing subject 'Ya vam ne vrag' - I am not your enemy.  The lengthy email goes on to implore Russian people to reject the war in Ukraine and seek the truth about the invasion from non-state news services.

The message appears in Russian with an English translation and it begins: "Dear friend, I am writing to you to express my concern for the secure future of our children on this planet. Most of the world has condemned Putin's invasion of Ukraine."

In just a few days, more than 22 million of these emails landed in Russian inboxes, and they're being sent by volunteers around the world, who are donating their time and email addresses to the cause.

This is one of a growing number of unusual ways that hackers, activists and every day people around the world are trying to reach out to Russian people online to circumvent media blocks and censorship. One Polish Twitter user's is posting reviews talking about the war to Russian businesses on Google and Yandex went viral.

Elsewhere hacker groups claim to have defaced Russian news websites with messages to Russian people to "stop Putin". But the spam email campaign created by a small team in Norway seems to have caught the imagination of thousands of people searching for ways to help Russians learn about the war.

"During the Second World War, and in earlier wars, people flew over Germany with leaflets and dropped them out. This is just a more modern way of trying to get people to open their eyes," says 'Fabian', who came up with the idea.

The 50-year-old Norwegian, who runs a computer network business, doesn't want his name to be published for fear of retaliation from the Russian authorities. He says he felt compelled to do something after becoming increasingly anxious about the possibility of World War Three.

Y Combinator:    Twitter:     Reddit:      Flipboard:     BBC:    Knowledia:   TheUBJ:    HSToday:   

You Might Also Read: 

Twitter Joins Ukraine’s War Effort: