A group of Polish developers have created a website that allows anyone to communicate randomly with Russians, in order to inform them about the war in Ukraine and counter government disinformation. To do this, they use a database containing more than 20 million telephone numbers and 140 million email addresses.
This collective, called Squad303, offers anyone the opportunity to send a standard message to an individual in Russia, describing the reality of what is happening in Ukraine. The goal is evidently to inform Russians about the real situation in Ukraine and to fight against any form of propaganda spread by Vladimir Putin, government authorities or complicit Russian media.
Squad303 states that "nearly 150 million Russians do not know the truth about the causes or course of the war in Ukraine. It is fed with the lies of the Kremlin propaganda. There is no free media in Russia and the internet is censored."
The way this cyber tool works is extremely simple. You just have to go to the 1920.in website and then choose the desired means of sending your message. Then, you will be randomly assigned a phone number or an e-mail address among those available, to which you can send an information message, in Russian. While not everyone can expect a reply, the initiative could potentially lead to some conversations with local people.
Another recent initiative: A free VPN for Ukrainian Internet users.
