{"id":26545,"date":"2022-03-05T13:19:06","date_gmt":"2022-03-05T18:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=26545"},"modified":"2022-03-15T10:20:09","modified_gmt":"2022-03-15T14:20:09","slug":"26545","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=26545","title":{"rendered":"Thousands of IT workers in Russia sign public anti-war petition"},"content":{"rendered":"
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FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION<\/p>\n

An article by Natasha Lomas March 1 from TechCrunch<\/a><\/p>\n

In a hint of the strength of opposition among Russian professionals to war in Ukraine, an open letter that\u2019s been circulating through the country\u2019s IT industry since the invasion on Thursday \u2014 to protest at the act of military aggression and call for peace \u2014 has gathered around 30,000 signatories from named IT workers.<\/p>\n

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\nPortrait of Natalia Lukyanchikova from her Facebook page<\/a> <\/center><\/p>\n

The petition is entitled: \u201cAn open letter from representatives of the Russian IT industry against the military operation on the territory of Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

The list of names and job titles \u2014 some also specifying which company the person works for \u2014 includes IT professionals who identify themselves as entrepreneurs, product managers, heads of customer experience, analytics, backend developers, product designers, marketing specialists, devops engineers, iOS engineers, gameplay developers, system analysts, IT recruiters and many, many more.<\/p>\n

The Google Document that\u2019s been used to host the petition runs to 652 pages.<\/p>\n

The full text of the letter, which is written in Russian, reads [translated with machine translation]:<\/p>\n

We, the employees of the Russian IT industry, are categorically against military actions on the territory of Ukraine initiated by the armed forces of the Russian Federation.<\/p>\n

We consider any manifestation of force that leads to the outbreak of war unjustified and call for the cancellation of decisions that may inevitably entail human casualties on each side. Our countries have always been close to each other. And today we are worried about our Ukrainian colleagues, friends, relatives. We are concerned and morally oppressed by what is happening in the cities of Ukraine now.<\/p>\n

In our work we make the best products, the best service, we sincerely do everything so that Russian IT solutions can be proud of. We want our country to be associated not with war, but with peace and progress.<\/p>\n

Progress and development of technologies for the benefit of man are impossible in conditions of war and threats to people\u2019s lives and health, they are possible only in conditions of cooperation, diversity of points of view, information exchange and open dialogue.<\/p>\n

We ask the leadership of our country to pay attention to our appeal, find ways to resolve this situation peacefully and prevent human casualties.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

(Continued in right column)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Questions related to this article:<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
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\n Can the peace movement help stop the war in the Ukraine?<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

(Continued from left column)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not possible to verify that all the names listed as signatories are genuine \u2014 but we have confirmed that the petition was started by a woman called Natalia Lukyanchikova, who told us she\u2019s an \u201cIT specialist\u201d.<\/p>\n

She is also the first signatory of the letter, where she lists herself as a product analyst at recruitment website, hh.ru.<\/p>\n

TechCrunch reached Lukyanchikova via email and she explained that she shared the peace petition to her public Facebook page last week \u2014 calling for other IT workers to put their names to it and to mobilize to try to get media coverage for the initiative.<\/p>\n

We also spoke with another Russian IT worker who told us they had signed the petition \u2014 and said lots of people from their tech company, including its CEO, had also signed \u2014 but this source requested anonymity to avoid drawing attention to their action because of the risk of retaliation.<\/p>\n

In her initial\u00a0Facebook post\u00a0to launch the petition, Lukyanchikova wrote [translated from Russian]: \u201cBelow is the text of an open letter from the IT community. I don\u2019t know if this will work out, but I know that collective action helps sometimes. This also helps people understand that they are not alone. So far this is the only legal action I see that is not banned. You can sign up via the link in the first comment.\u201d<\/p>\n

In subsequent posts to her Facebook page, she can also be seen tracking progress over a handful of days as the number of signatures rises.<\/p>\n

The petition appears to have quickly picked up steam among Russia\u2019s IT industry as the country\u2019s invasion of Ukraine stepped up, garnering over 10,000 signatories by Saturday and topping 20,000 by Sunday \u2014 before reaching close to 30,000 names now, at the time of writing.<\/p>\n

Asked if she believes the petition could have an impact,\u00a0Lukyanchikova told us: \u201cI want to believe that our voices will be heard and peace will be restored.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some media outlets inside Russia have reported on the anti-war letter.<\/p>\n

Tech industry publication\u00a0vc.ru<\/a>, for example, covered it on Saturday, when it reported that the signatories \u2014 then numbering around 1,300 \u2014 included employees of Russian tech giants Yandex and VKontakte, among many other types of businesses.<\/p>\n

Its report also notes that similar anti-war letters have been published by representatives of other industries from inside the country, such as teachers, scientists and doctors. Although the IT industry letter appears to have gathered the largest number of signatures.<\/p>\n

This report was updated with a couple of minor corrections: We originally stated the petition had closed; actually it\u2019s still open to further signatures. Also Lukyanchikova\u2019s job title is \u2018product analyst\u2019, not \u2018food analyst\u2019 as the machine translation of the cyrillic script displayed in the petition list, which we had used to translate it from Russian, (incorrectly) rendered it.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION An article by Natasha Lomas March 1 from TechCrunch In a hint of the strength of opposition among Russian professionals to war in Ukraine, an open letter that\u2019s been circulating through the country\u2019s IT industry since the invasion on Thursday \u2014 to protest at the act of military aggression and call … Continue reading Thousands of IT workers in Russia sign public anti-war petition<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,75,15],"tags":[33],"class_list":["post-26545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disarmament","category-europe","category-information","tag-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}