"Let me send you a text about Ukraine"
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People around the world are using a new website to circumvent the Kremlin’s propaganda machine by sending individual messages about the war in Ukraine to random people in Russia.
The website was developed by a group of Polish programmers who obtained some 20 million cellphone numbers and close to 140 million email addresses owned by Russian individuals and companies. The site randomly generates numbers and addresses from those databases and allows anyone anywhere in the world to message them, with the option of using a pre-drafted message in Russian that calls on people to bypass President Vladimir Putin’s censorship of the media.
Since it was launched on March 6, thousands of people across the globe, including many in the U.S., have used the site to send millions of messages in Russian, footage from the war, or images of Western media coverage documenting Russia’s assault on civilians, according to Squad303, as the group that wrote the tool calls itself.
The initiative is one among a number of efforts, mainly by Western media organizations and governments, that are trying to puncture the tight controls Mr. Putin’s government has imposed within Russia on reporting about the conflict, which Russian media are banned from describing as a war.
Since its forces invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the Kremlin has shut down all independent media in Russia or censored their coverage. Access to Western social networks such as Twitter has also been curtailed. Authorities this week threatened to ban Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook and Instagram, and a new law stipulates that anyone publishing “fake news” about Russia’s campaign in Ukraine could face 15 years in prison.
“Our aim was to break through Putin’s digital wall of censorship and make sure that Russian people are not totally cut off from the world and the reality of what Russia is doing in Ukraine,” a spokesman for Poland-based Squad303 said.
The spokesman, a programmer who asked not to be identified, likened the effort to such Cold War-era projects as the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe, which beamed radio programs in several languages across the Iron Curtain. Nearly seven million text messages and two million emails have been sent using the website since it was created a week ago, he said.
