Source: Inshorts
On Monday, March 7, the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, Mykhailo Federov wrote an open letter to Jeff Bezos, the Founder of Amazon. In his letter, Federov urged Bezos to suspend all provisions of AWS or Amazon Web Services in Russia. This letter comes in the midst of the war caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which initiated on February 24.
Bloody Russian aggression continues. The world must combine efforts against Russian missiles and tanks bombing kindergartens and hospitals in Ukraine. @JeffBezos, @amazon, Stop the war – stop your services for RU!
— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) March 6, 2022
A group of tech giants, including Microsoft, Meta, Google, and of course, Amazon have been contributing towards paralysing Russia. Microsoft and Google have halted sales of goods and services in Russia with respect to the tensions in Ukraine. Analysts like Dan Ives believe that these companies seem to be following a moral obligation to act in favour of Ukraine. However, some are under the opinion that cutting off internet services is somewhat harsher than stopping sales.
In his letter, Fedorov wrote, “I believe that the best employers…. would never support bloodshed and disinformation.”
Source: Twitter
Federov mentioned how the suspension of the Amazon Web Services provisions in Russia would support the global agenda of many governments. These businesses are the ones that have chosen the provision for long-term stability and development despite the temporary losses in profit. Amazon Web Servces currently does not have any offices or data centres in Russia. In fact, its biggest customers in the country are companies that are headquartered outside of Russia.
What the supporters of this agenda do not understand is that suspension of web services has a direct effect on civilians. The recent severance of ties with Russian citizen was carried out by Cogent Communications. The Internet backbone provider cut off its connections to Russia due to the Ukrainian tension. However, it seemed to directly impact Russian citizens who would be deprived of truthful information about the ongoing war.
Federov has visibly reached out to many of the tech giants for aid in Ukraine. Elon Musk had sent help to Ukraine in form of Starlink Satellites within 48 hours after the minister pleaded for assistance. Similarly, Meta had set up a special team to look into disinformations being spread about Ukraine from Russia. Additionally, they had also blocked Russian state media from selling ads on Facebook. Russia had retaliated on these restrictions by placing a partial restriction on Facebook. Youtube and Google had also taken similar steps towards Russia.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Bloody Russian aggression continues. The world must combine efforts against Russian missiles and tanks bombing kindergartens and hospitals in Ukraine. <a href=”https://twitter.com/JeffBezos?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@JeffBezos</a>, <a href=”https://twitter.com/amazon?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@amazon</a>, Stop the war – stop your services for RU!</p>— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) <a href=”https://twitter.com/FedorovMykhailo/status/1500549503471992835?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>March 6, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
