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At this time, the Come Again Alive Basis is among the largest, most distinguished teams helping Ukrainian forces. It was based in 2014 by Vitaliy Deynega, a Kyiv-based volunteer who started to boost cash and provide bulletproof vests to troopers preventing within the Donbas area of Ukraine instantly after Russia annexed Crimea. Deynega wrote “Come Again Alive” on every vest, inspiring the identify of his group. Its efforts have been promoted by the Ukrainian authorities, which has known as Come Again Alive “Ukraine’s predominant charity fund.” Potential donors have additionally been directed to the Nationwide Financial institution of Ukraine’s “particular account” by way of American and British Chase Financial institution accounts.
However on Thursday, the muse encountered a serious setback: one in every of its main sources of worldwide funding, the crowdfunding platform Patreon, kicked it off. It remained offline as of 1 p.m. US Japanese time on Friday, February 25.
A Patreon spokesperson cited the corporate’s coverage on “dangerous and unlawful actions” to justify the transfer, saying: “Patreon doesn’t enable any campaigns concerned in violence or buying of army gear, no matter their trigger. Now we have suspended the marketing campaign in query whereas we examine.”
The backlash from Ukrainians was swift. Critics accused the platform of chopping off an important lifeline for self-defense towards Russia and questioned why it had made the choice now, provided that the web page had been on-line for years.
Patreon has develop into the go-to supply for crowdfunding on this battle; different established Ukrainian organizations just like the English-language media outlet the Kyiv Independent also raise funds on the platform. To this point, GoFundMe has not launched any statements on the Ukrainian crowdfunding that’s happening on its platform.
Such platforms maintain great energy for his or her potential to assist folks increase and transfer huge sums of money. However one downside they face is that, particularly within the fog of conflict, it isn’t at all times clear who’s giving and receiving cash. There are already numerous Ukraine-related scams floating across the web. To supply an instance, one Twitter account was beforehand used for playing. Now it’s sharing Bitcoin hyperlinks and claims to be elevating cash to assist fund the battle towards Russia.
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