Namecheap: Russia Service Termination | Hacker News Reader

Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

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Just received this email:

Dear XXXX,

Unfortunately, due to the Russian regime's war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine, we will no longer be providing services to users registered in Russia. While we sympathize that this war may not affect your own views or opinion on the matter, the fact is, your authoritarian government is committing human rights abuses and engaging in war crimes so this is a policy decision we have made and will stand by.

If you hold any top-level domains with us, we ask that you transfer them to another provider by March 6, 2022.

Additionally, and with immediate effect, you will no longer be able to use Namecheap Hosting, EasyWP, and Private Email with a domain provided by another registrar in zones .ru, .xn--p1ai (рф), .by, .xn--90ais (бел), and .su. All websites will resolve to 403 Forbidden, however, you can contact us to assist you with your transfer to another provider.

Customer Support, Namecheap

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We haven't blocked the domains, we are asking people to move. There are plenty of other choices out there when it comes to infrastructure services so this isn't "deplatforming". I sympathize with people that are not pro regime but ultimately even those tax dollars they may generate go to the regime. We have people on the ground in Ukraine being bombarded now non stop. I cannot with good conscience continue to support the Russian regime in any way, shape or form. People that are getting angry need to point that at the cause, their own government. If more grace time is necessary for some to move, we will provide it. Free speech is one thing but this decision is more about a government that is committing war crimes against innocent people that we want nothing to do with.

I'm moving our of Russia with my family. I was glad that my business was already outside of it. Now this domain stuff just added up to a pile of problems I must solve.

And the effect is negative - I moved domains out of NameCheap to Russia simply because any other US or EU based registrar can do the same crazy thing and are not trusted.

So Putin's regime actually got more money out of this.

Sure but I don't want our company to be a factor in that contribution. I'm sure there are plenty of others out there willing to take the money and provide these services. If there are anti-government non profits out there, We'll consider keeping those up with us if you'd still want anything to do with us.

If you are no longer based in Russia and not doing business there, we'll consider that as well.

your support team does not think so

The continued refrain of “contact our currently being bombed support teams” has got to be the most amusing part of this whole thing - for those watching from the outside.

You're just the average russian right now. Complaining when the war pulls them out from their comfortable orwellian reality. No social network, e-payments, entertainment and start to cry.

Where were you last Wednesday for instance, hours before the "pacification" took place? Not complaining perhaps, not doing anything.

Not doing anything

Who will return our money?

You'll get refunded on any time you have left on that service. (hosting, email)

You may no longer be able to refund the money because of the sanctions.

You told me to transfer my domains before the 6th of March. But the transfer takes 5-7 days. Even if I initiate the transfer today or tomorrow it won't finish before the 6th. What will you do if the transfer doesn't get finalized before the 6th? Answer please!

A DNS transfer doesn't take 5-7 days. It takes up to, but rarely, ~72 hours.

Yes, but they will remove root DNS.

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say here. Namecheap doesn't operate root name servers.

Their website says it takes 5 days.

In the most extreme of cases.

In most cases it takes no more than a few hours. Maybe a day.

It's been quite a few hours but the domains I started transferring still haven't transferred, while they did transfer from other registrars like Godaddy within an hour at most.

Just a heads up: After initiating a transfer, Namecheap sends you an email asking if you initiated the domain transfer, including a link in case you want to „reject“.

Despite the wording in the email, that link also allows you to approve the transfer. I did that yesterday and once I approved the transfers using that link, the transfer happened pretty much immediately.

This is golden! Thanks!

These emails have stopped arriving.

What’s about domain names? I guess that people don’t expect to pay yearly renewal fees more than once a year every time when a russophobe (I don’t see other explanation) CEO sees that they can expose their anger safely.

Moving your domain name to a new registrar extends the time that your registration is valid.

Right, thanks.

Now you're acting like a fraudster! Namecheap rejects in support emails reimbursing me money I paid for the domain that was noticed to be dropped at March 6th.

You broke the deal and decided to keep the money!! It so disappointing. I hope there will be a class action suit, or other form of responsibility for such a misconduct.

Transfer auth codes and confirmation emails have stopped arriving from Namecheap. I've transferred a ton of domains and now I can't transfer the rest. What am I supposed to do with the deadlines that you've set when your system doesn't even work?

VVP :-)

Could you clarify what exactly is a "user registered in Russia" that you are banning? I left the country (because of the government), and now have american billing info in my account, but I still got the termination email.

You'll be fine, please contact us and we'll get you whitelisted. Point here if any confusion with our support team.

There are multiple sanctions, affecting government-related personalities and state companies. Why did you decide to make a ban for the total nation despite on their location, occupation and not same black list of government-related targets?

Tax dollars fund that very government whether directly or indirectly. If you have a property this is anti regime or to that effect. We will consider white listng you.

"Tax dollar"... I don't want to diverge the discussion, but that's the very same reason I've been avoiding "Made in China" products (as much as I can) for several years now.

Doesn't every domain name service pay taxes? (including what these users will switch to?) I don't see how taxes are relevant.

I hope you also go forward and ban German domains as their gas payments are still funding Russia.

Agree, This is some Orwell Hate Week stuff.

They are a private corporation who is able to choose who to do business with, including blacklisting a full nation.

They also have what sounds like a sizeable workforce in Ukraine itself, so it should be pretty obvious why they chose to blacklist the entire nation invading their direct coworkers'.

If their customers are US persons it's not that simple, because national origin is a protected status.

Some US citizens with Russian heritage could have Russian addresses listed like 10 years ago.

Would be funny to see this case in court.

It doesn't work that way. Discrimination doesn't follow the transitive property. To discriminate illegally you have to discriminate for an illegal reason. Discriminating for a legal reason while that person also belongs to a protected class is not illegal.

What’s the legal reason here though? That’s a genuine question, I don’t know much about US law.

Given the context of this thread and the current war, I think it's pretty clear Namecheap is turning away customers in Russia's jurisdiction because they don't want to support the Russian regime through taxes. The fact that the people who live under that regime are mostly Russians is tangential.

It's just like how Walmart.com doesn't ship to China. That's legal. And if I'm in the US, and I put a Chinese address on my Walmart.com account, and they don't ship me a package, that's not discrimination, that's just a mistake.

Now, if Namecheap starts intentionally going after people of Russian origin outside of Russia, that's a different story, but it doesn't look like that's what's happening here.

It seems like they're banning people who simply have a background in that country.

There are a few words for that philosophy, and legality of that business practice becomes questionable.

Hi! I'm in the same boat, I left Russia 5 years ago and now I live in the US and all my billing/account addresses are also registered in the US. I'm confused as to why I got the termination email.

Dear Namecheap CEO,

A better way you could have done this would be to announce non-renewal but have a single-renewal escape clause for people who are too busy to deal with it. This would allow you to make your point without shafting the consumer. You could also have given something back like a one-time at-cost discount on moving to new replacement domains. You know, act in solidarity with your customer instead of against them.

PS. It's not too late to fix this. Be part of the internet we love, the internet that crosses borders and joins people.

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind. - Einstein

I agree that this move seems too abrupt. Fulfilling current paid services and setting a reasonable deadline for final renewal (if payment is still available, which may be out of your control) and a reasonable maximum term length for any renewals would provide a lot more business continuity.

Maybe you're not worried about business continuity of the newly sanctioned customers, but other customers who aren't currently sanctioned but may be subject to future sanctions because they don't control the regime they live in would appreciate a more reasonable continuity process.

Of course, if these sanctions are as a result of legal requirements, gotta follow the law. But, so far, there doesn't seem to be a blanket ban on business with people in Russia; other than banking restrictions make it hard to transact.

I've paid in full for four domains just four days ago -- some two hours before I was thrown into a police bus. I may understand why you did this, but this is a low move, nonetheless.

Tax dollars or not, you're imposing extra costs on your users, most of which relied on your services for decades, and terminating any trust they ever had in your services.

> People that are getting angry need to point that at the cause, their own government.

Believe me, I'm very angry at my government. Unlike you, I've been protesting the regime for several years, putting my health and well-being at risk. I've donated thousands of dollars to anti-regime organizations. And I'm currently in the process of fleeing the country because of this.

So I'm also very angry at you, for screwing me over when I'm in a really fucking vulnerable position, as well as hundreds other developers who depended on your company.

I don't think they ( namecheap) has a choice, considering a lot of their employees live/lived in Ukraine.

> a lot of their employees live/lived in Ukraine

I get the impression this is a lot of why they made this business decision. They're standing strongly by their employees.

For sake of perspective.

Let's say Belgium was invaded and I had to to handle a support ticket from the same nationality as the agressor.

I'm not sure if I would have the clarity to handle it with the "expected" care, if I just had to flee my home. While standing with your employees is one thing, I'm not sure if the same support quality can be achieved.

The whole continent received nuke threats by now, making it worse.

Dear fellow Belgian,

Belgium already took part in the conflict, sending arms to Ukraine and troops to Romania to strengthen NATO presence along the border.

Even if Belgium is not yet invaded nor bombed, you have to rethink your doing business with Russia, even though individual Russian citizens you deal with are agreeable people you always had pleasure working with.

That's one of the worst parts of the war. It breaks relationships between millions of people while mere thousands die.

Note: Belgium hasn't played an "active" role. My example was hypothethical to illustrate my point.

NATO is a defensive measure against ( as it is proven now) a valid threat. I'm reiterating my statement of 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679110 - Which was flagged, but unfortunately seems to be already proven right (partially, since it's not over at all) in hindsight. Since the latest threats of Russia are now also against the EU ( and as such, NATO)

Russia ( as in Putin's Russia) is destroying everything possible. The West ( as in democratic countries) tried for a long time that trade will improve democracy, this is even the underlying 'raison d'être' of the EU.

There is ( i believe) a big shift coming away of that thinking. Where other countries like Hungary ( as in Orban's Hungary) should be aware that the EU is toughening their stance with the latest events unfolding.

I agree Belgium's NATO contributions are not playing an active role in the conflict.

I'm not sure I can agree that Belgium's contribution of machine guns to Ukraine [1] don't qualify as playing an active role.

I guess I should say that regardless of whether it's an active role, I'm happy that they are doing it, and I'm happy that my government is doing the same.

[1] https://www.thebulletin.be/belgium-sends-convoy-military-equ...

Me too. I'm glad Europe as much as possible is united in this, I don't think there is a real precedent like this since ... ever.

Some quirks to work out, but at the current time it doesn't even matter.

I do hope that Ukraine can fend off long enough. It makes me sad that they are on the front and we are sitting in the comfort from our chairs surrounded by countries enjoying hard-fought democracy by our grandparents.

PS. Planning to take a month holiday to help in Ukraine if all goes well. Donated some, but I'd rather spend time physically helping, no military experience.

> There is ( i believe) a big shift coming away of that thinking

The US has just weaponized global finance. A country's access to most of the world is now contingent upon playing by the US/EU's rules. Or, there's China.

Oh no, not the global finance! How sad.

And if by "rules" you mean not acting like North Korea, then yes. You should play by those rules.

> Oh no, not the global finance! How sad.

You jest, but much like a man who has just lost his job and has no foreseeable income, Russia is now entirely dependent upon what savings it has to pay for everything... from China. Surely, China wouldn't take advantage of their comrades, right?

China knows how to fleece a country in need. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93China_25-year_Coo...

Exactly! The tech community is the epicenter of change in Russia, same as in most places.

My situation is different, but equally anecdotal. I left Russia years ago, as soon as I could. My company isn't in Russia. I don't pay taxes in Russia. I am not even Russian by ethnicity, but I have relatives in Russia and I am still holding a Russian passport. Does that make me a bad person? Even if I were Russian, is it against the ICANN rules to belong to certain ethnicities or nationalities?

As a final note, people who live in CIS all have friends in both countries. For them the war is real and not on a TV screen. Imagine how many hours will those people waste changing those damn configs instead of helping people in need in both Ukraine and Russia...

Sorry, but you should be happy the whole world and companies are joining your fight. Putin has to be stopped now, that includes some uncool stuff like this and blocking SWIFT.

Easy to say when you are not the target.

Making me use 50% less electricity is one thing. Having to move all my domains would be quite another.

At least you are not a target for a missile. For a lot of people right now it's the best what they can hope for.

Ah yes, the "someone else has it worse therefore your concerns are irrelevant" argument.

This decision will not prevent a single missile from being fired. On the contrary, it will put more power into Russian entities.

I don't understand, you're saying that the fact a missle is aimed at someone in the Ukraine gives namecheap a license to shit on their paying customers?

In your mind, they are just aimed? And btw companies are free to do or not do business with someone based on their internal reasons. If they find that their business should not conduct business with a customer, it's totally up to them. Until they are following the agreement and contact is withdrawn according to all legal requirements. It's just a regular business practice. Benefits probably were suppressed by the cost.

They're saying that the fact that Russia is invading Ukraine gives namecheap a legitimate reason to decline to provide services in Russia.

you didn't get the problem. Namecheap made two unethical things, one annoying and small and the other that cost lives.

1) The fact that they ask to move Russians to other registrators, is just barely an inconvenience. It cost me 30 seconds to create a ticket in scrum and developers will move everything. But misjudgment by nationality is bad. Imagine if all Jewish customers will get such letters because Isreal/Palestinian war?

2) Catastrophic is this: instead of using millions of dollars from Russian customers to help to save Ukraine and lives - they steer away from this money to governmental control Russian registrators. In other words, their CEO Richard just send this million dollars to Putin instead of Ukraine. That will cost lives.

I'm there with you, but the opposition is disproportionately reliant on VPNs and foreign cloud hosting. It is required to have any shot at tipping the scales at all. The Twitter and Facebook are blocked already at this point.

Blocking SWIFT was for the little people to suffer, same as what Namecheap is now doing. Russian gas company still uses SWIFT and they are not banned it's all theater by the Germans. Germany and France could have prevented this catastrophe but they choose not to.

I really hope the CEO, Richard Kirkendall, responds to your comment. It would be cowardly not to do so.

Edit: It seems like he has responded to other comments but not this one.

>Unlike you, I've been protesting the regime for several years, putting my health and well-being at risk

If you've been protesting your regime for years, why don't you also understand their protest?

It seems like you are both aligned here.

His protest probably didn't cause collateral damage to innocent people.

But his government is directly killing innocent people in Ukraine right now, which is worse.

Different times call for different measures of protest, albeit these two people still share the same goals against the same aggressor.

> his government

In the US, Europe, etc, one's government is actually approximately representative of a large portion of the populace.

In Russia, the government is autocratic and not at all representative of the populace, so comparisons like "their government is doing a worse thing than we're doing to them" kinda falls flat.

What it sounds like is happening here is that Namecheap feels like they want to do something, and they're doing a thing that they are able to do, and something causes damage in the general direction of the intended target. Probably there are non-zero Russian state news, propaganda, etc sites that will be affected by this.

But this is clearly not a war born out of popular desire of the populace, and the collateral damage from this is huge. The amount of harm this will cause random people who may be trying to flee Russia, or to Russian opposition organizations that might now be less able to organize internal protests, almost certainly outweighs any inconvenience caused to the Putin regime.

Yes it's true the Russian regime is not a representative democracy, but it is an oligarchy.

International trade and economic sanctions hits the wealthy elite and is effective at influencing change. It's unfortunate that this inconveniences citizens but when the regime is unjustly declaring war and killing people it's one of the few moves left to make.

I'm not arguing against economic sanctions, those definitely hurt the responsible parties most. Kicking Russia out of SWIFT probably does 10x the damage to the oligarchs as to the citizenry.

Something like kicking every Russian person off of a web hosting platform does not hurt those in power most. Anyone with enough resources to matter in Russian politics will have enough resources to simply employ someone to move everything over and this will barely register as a blip. This probably impacts random citizens 10x more than the people in power.

You are arguing against international trade and economic sanctions though, by saying it inconveniences Russian citizens while ignoring the Ukrainian citizens who are being killed.

Officially removing your business from Russia is a form of boycott, and it does hurt the oligarchs who own the businesses who use the registrar.

As someone that protested frequently and usually has a "short fuse" regarding abuse of authority, I find that unlikely. Marching down a street can cause collateral damage, you slow down emergency services when you do that. Same with picketing government buildings, people providing essential services just can't show up to work that day.

A modern "government" is a controlled civil war in the same way a modern engine is controlled explosions. I day dream and have the stamina to engage in endless friendly debates about how we can improve or change this, but let's not pretend there's a clean way to engage with "the system" because there's not.

Protests almost by definition cause collateral damage.

If you are blocking off streets, you are slowing down people getting into work, slowing down emergency services...

If you are not doing any of that, you are not getting heard and there's not much "protesting" going around.

I think GP's point was that these protests, while aligned in spirit, might actually work against each other. Non-Russian companies stopping to provide service to Russian-protesting entities will mean that they can't achieve their protest objectives anymore.

Have you already stopped paying taxes, that fund this war?

Perhaps it's not like the US where you stop paying taxes and no one even mentions it for several years. Then you get a slap-on-the-wrist fine and have to pay back taxes.

Indeed. They pay taxes at the source in Russia, so that humans get to know and discuss their net salary only.

It's dehumanizing and depoliticizing and should be changed once Putin is out of power.

Same in the Netherlands.

I never knew there were so many dehumanizing regimes in Europe!

Not sure what you're talking about, it was the same when I worked in the UK - unless you switch to self-employment, your employer pays taxes for you and you just get the net salary.

This is not specific to Russia. It's also not even close to dehumanizing. Locally, my employer handles the taxes from my income. I get both numbers on the payslips and get an annual national summary of "what were my taxes spent on".

What.. here in the UK if you're employed then you do not do tax returns, it's automatically deducted from your salary.. and businesses charge VAT at point of sale.. Nothing "dehumanizing and depoliticizing" about it, in fact I wouldn't ever want to change it. Only those with self-employed income complete tax returns, which is way more efficient.

In Russia your employer pays taxes for you whether you want it or not. You don't even know how much.

Given that Russia has VAT, the only way for Russians to stop paying taxes is to starve to death.

There are multiple ways to not pay Russian taxes that go towards war effort against Ukraine besides starving to death.

Protesting the war is one of them. Leaving is another.

Being complicit and dying are not the only two options.

An average Russian can't just pack up bags and leave willy-nilly. Few countries will issue a visa for anything other than tourism or short-term business. If one has skills that are in demand (say, IT), it's easier - but most people don't have those skills.

I fail to see how protesting the war is a "way to not pay Russian taxes". Unless you specifically mean refusing to pay taxes to protest the war, which would go about as well in Russia as it would in US. Well, except that, once you get arrested, the cops are likely to "entertain" themselves by e.g. putting a gas mask on you and squeezing the hose. Or shoving a bottle into your anus. Or just beating you with rubber batons until you pass out.

The protesting issue you describe is a tragedy of commons. Mass denial of global services to Russian people is exactly the incentive for them to overcome it.

> There are multiple ways to not pay Russian taxes that go towards war effort against Ukraine besides starving to death. Protesting the war is one of them.

Do stores refund your VAT if you have a protest sign or something?

I feel insulted by your attempt to play dumb. Protesting is a way to stop the money you already paid from going towards the war.

Protests in Russia are not a way to stop the government from doing anything. Haven't been for over a decade.

That is debatable. Worked in Ukraine, I don't see what is so different about Russia, especially now when a lot of people understand that Putin is not just an authoritarian, but a completely deranged one.

Ukraine was never an authoritarian country, not even under Yanukovich. He tried to go there after the protests started, and the rest is history.

Russia has been an authoritarian country since 2011 at the very least - and arguably longer, just of a softer variety prior to that - when the regime crushed the largest protest in Putin's times (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011%E2%80%932013_Russian_prot...). By now, it has a special branch of internal armed forces - National Guard / Rosgvardia - which is used primarily against protesters.

So yes, there's a big difference in practice.

Well, yes it is obviously different, but it is a weak proof for impossibly of change via protest.

I did not assert impossibility of change via protest. Only that, given where Russia is now, it would have to be violent, armed protest. And you're not going to get people engaged in that with economic sanctions, no matter how severe.

Russia tax income is less than $20B. But income from selling gas/oil is $80B, plus about same from other types of resource export. So if we talk about not paying taxes it's the Europe who buys that gas should stop buying it, that would make much bigger effect.

Not being EU citizen, I am in no position to tell them to stop, though personally I definitely would.

Hypothetically should Americans stop paying taxes? Their government has a history of arming extremists/conflicts worldwide.

I understand the Ukrainian invasion is sickening/a travesty but I struggle to square what appears to be an underlying hypocrisy.

Indeed. And given the state of democracy in Russia and in the US (for now), you could argue that the average US citizen bears more responsibility for the actions of the US government over the last decades than the average Russian for the actions of the Russian government.

Civil disobedience is a personal decision. Judging other people on their decision to practice it is also personal.

In the U.S. it is even coded into the Declaration of Independence.

Specifically Re: hypocrisy. The scale of the issue is the crux to the yes/no answer to your question. Plenty of people drew the line to choose "yes" for the US war efforts in the past. I personally do not believe it would be justified right now.

Yeah but the main point is America mostly doesn't kill Europeans, certainly not western(ised) ones.

So you are saying it’s ok to kill people with some other skin color or language, like, Iraqi people for example?

No, it's not OK, but the drive that some people have to make it an issue of skin color is misguided. It's not skin color, it's relevance. Equally cruel, but still different.

The world is organized by a small group of countries and power blocks that are in charge, whilst the other 90% has no meaningful economical or military relevance. This in no way makes it "more OK" to do harm, I'm just saying the selector is relevance, not race.

Nobody remembers Iraq anymore and the million dead Iraqis, the destroyed country, the resulting vacuum that produced ISIS, the destruction of Syria, and all under false pretense. Oh, and Afghanistan, that unconquerable land that makes a mockery of all its invaders. Or Libya. Or Arab Spring. Or... And these are just the last 20 years.

Of course, Putin should be condemned, but it is interesting how nobody held the US to a similar standard.

Well, more than a few of those conquests were prevented by Russia. Assad wasn't spared because of his tactical genius. The calculus might change for a few regime changes this year...

Quakers in the United States have been lobbying for this for decades. It has no hope of succeeding but, hey, at least they're trying.

I know at least one person who, around the time of the Iraq war, mostly stopped working and no longer pays taxes. It can be done, but it's a pretty serious lifestyle choice.

While there's a lot to criticize about US foreign policy, invading a western nation with a democratically elected government isn't on the list. You really can't sympathize with Saddam Hussein or the Taliban. I wouldn't (and didn't) stop paying taxes over it.

If the US government invaded Mexico or Canada, I might.

Taxes stopped supporting war in the US a long ago because people don’t like paying for wars they don’t support. The “department of defense” finances its wars by borrowing from the FED. These credit card wars inflate the money supply instead and although everyone still loses its a sneaky way to steal money from people.

Your anger is understandable, but think of it this way: you are both fighting the same fight. Their action may well shorten the length of the remaining time for Putin, gives a very small comfort to their employees and if enough companies do this then it will hopefully make some real change for the better. Russia may be able to exist in isolation from the world, but not for long.

From the inside, it doesn't quite look that way. The state has been doing a lot to become less reliant on imports in the last decade.

If you also consider examples of North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and many other dictatorships, you'll see that isolation doesn't really correlate with regime change.

Yes, understood. I get where you are coming from, but at the same time I totally understand that for a company with such a large footprint in Ukraine it is absolutely unacceptable to continue to do business with what is now properly termed 'the enemy'. The price for access to the global market is that you behave like a team player and that you don't willy nilly invade other countries.

Even if isolation does not necessarily correlate with regime change that is still something that in the end gets decided within the country, not outside of it. After all, regime change is exactly what Putin was after in Ukraine so that would seem to be fair turnabout.

This war has created such pain and damage in only a few days its unimaginable. See my previous comments for my position on russians, but at the same time, out of solidarity i think they should move out of namecheap. Its too sensitive for the company to debate it and process it. People that last week were working at tech giants, people like you and i, were here commenting and debating and now they need to hold guns in their hands and fight in a war started by russia while their families are displaced.

So out of solidarity, russian users could move their domain names out and leave it as is.

> This war has created such pain and damage in only a few days its unimaginable.

Not to spoil your evening but it is so far perfectly imaginable, though it very well could become unimaginable soon.

I am well aware. Tbh i am trying to figure in my mind what the first target will be. Hope its just and overreaction on my part.

Edit: grammar

At a guess a minor city in the North East of Ukraine, or one in Europe away from fall-out ending up over Russia. The latter would not be worth thinking about any further, you can kiss the world goodbye in that case.

The 'lets start with a small nuke' aka tit-for-tat scenario has been wargamed literally to death: it ends with total annihilation.

I don't think Putin is that brave. But he's also perfectly capable of killing millions of Ukranians with conventional weapons.

That will have the exact same effect. Why do you think Kyiv is still standing relatively unopposed? It's not as if Russia lacks bombers. But Putin knows very well that if they are moving for a Grozny scenario that the West will have to react, initially probably by wiping out the invaders in the hope that that will put an end to this but it may well escalate from there.

True however isolation does help limit the damage they can cause through influence and soft power

All of those countries have support from larger countries that aren't party to the sanctions/embargoes they face. Russia is the entirety or a substantial part of that support. Who does Russia turn to that wouldn't worry about being similarly isolated?

Do you realize how many people would suffer and even die because of that?

More or less than during the war in Ukraine?

In the country where the problem originates or in some other country?

How many Russian people are gonna die because of losing the ability to have their domain registered with Namecheap?

And yes, people will suffer, that's what happens when one country invades their neighbor in an unprovoked attack. You're placing blame in the wrong place here.

You are right - people do suffer already. That does not mean that you should purposely act to harm people even more just because “that’s what happens”. Your actions are your own responsibility.

It's not just because "that's what happens", it's a deliberate act to discourage the Russian state from continuing in their current course of action, and it significantly less destructive (to an absurd degree) / will cause significantly less suffering than what Russia is doing in Ukraine as we speak.

On the contrary, their action plays right into Russian government propaganda.

That's beside the point. With the presence they have in Ukraine they are forcing their employees to trade with what is at the moment their mortal enemy. That's impossible.

Personally I think the tax bit is thin, but I totally understand the pressure on their employees and that that does not feel right. They are waiting for the next missile impact while at the same time they are working to keep the websites of their enemy up and running, that's not something you should want or expect.

Their mortal enemy is Russia - the state and the government - not every individual Russian.

But in the absence of any ability to hurt said mortal enemy, they seem to have picked a target by association that is within their reach, so as to hurt something related to the enemy.

I understand why this is happening, but I don't see it as justifiable.

I agree, which is why I argued upthread that they exempt private individuals and focus on domains that are operated by companies.

Until those Russians do something they are supporting the status quo

What do you expect them to do?

The problem with sanctions is that they A) fail to cause regime change and B) cause deaths. In Venezuela, sanctions caused 40,000 deaths in 2 years.

Now, domain names going away won't cause deaths, but then again they won't cause regime change.

Russia has been propping up Venezuela. Maybe there will be quite a few regime changes this year?

You fight with the weapons you have. If you have a rock to defend your family with, you fight with the rock. The guy you kill with the rock is, realistically, probably as innocent as the commoners back in Russia.

If you have the ability to hit the Russian government where it hurts - in their money - not using it to defend your employees is as unconscionable as not picking up that rock to defend your family.

War has never differentiated between innocent and guilty in the past, nor can it differentiate today. It's a battle between governments, and people who are really hurt will always be the innocent.

Fuck war. But don't blame someone for defending themselves, their family, their employees, with the weapons they have, not the weapons you wish they had.

You are right, but deliberately hitting crowd of commoners with a huge rock trying to hit a coward warrior? Don't pretend the West has no more precise option

Economic damage is probably one of the most precise weapons we have that will damage a government yet which doesn't kill people (directly, I know quite well the impact of losing your income on your life in winter).

Could the US (UK, France, Germany, etc) hit Putin directly with a drone or missile strike? Quite possibly (though chances are pretty high that would look a lot like your "coward in a crowd" scenario).

But - pertinent to this conversation - can Namecheap's CEO hit Putin directly with a conventional weapon strike? No. He doesn't have bombs, drones, missiles, or guns. He has domain name registries and web hosting, and the ability to offer and not offer those services to others.

Now Russian citizens will be forced to spend their money inside the Russian economy, how will Putin recover from this?

Oh come on, we can actually see what’s happening to the Russian economy including the capital flight.

What economy? An unprecedented experiment has begun and should Putin persist many Russians will likely be paying for things with either gas, grass or ass in the coming weeks.

They could have done a 0 day warning. The rock they picked may not have been the absolute perfect rock, but they are making decisions quickly as imperfect people with limited knowledge and trying to make a just but humane action in support of what’s right. So I don’t fault them. Although I also would be quite upset at them if it put me in the situation of many of the commenters, especially if I had made sacrifices to fight against Putin.

War is cruel.

> Don't pretend the West has no more precise option

You are welcome to name what it is.

In this case you’re not hitting an enemy, though, you are hitting someone who’s actually on your side.

There is just no way to sanction someone like Putin directly, though. If Putin wants to transfer money or buy foreign currency, an FSB agent in Austria will contact some FSB near lawyer on Malta to set up a fake company in Liechtenstein to arrange a fake sale of goods from Romania - or whatever it takes. Unfortunately, the only way to have any effect is to affect the economy as a whole.

As we speak, the whole Ukrainian economy and infrastructure is destroyed, cities are bombed, hundreds of thousands are fleeing, and people are dying in Ukraine. While you're complaining that you have to transfer your Namecheap domain names. You need to get a sense of perspective.

There is: stop buying gas and oil from Russia. This is where the money you’re talking about come from. The bombs that are destroying Ukraine are bought with Western money.

But oh no, we can’t do it, we can’t have prices go up when inflation is already high. So we will make life harder for Russian people who oppose the war as a feel good measure instead.

But that's also happening. Nord Stream 2 is essentially gone, the company is being wound down, and the whole of Europe is switching away from Russian gas and oil as fast as they can. You cannot do that from today until tomorrow, but it's happening fast. The reliance on Russian gas and oil imports will be neglectable by 2030. Btw, you're asking the EU to bear all the disadvantages (no gas, no heating in winter) so you can maintain your economy? Doesn't that sound a bit selfish to you? Shouldn't you ask Putin to stop this senseless war instead?

As I've said, you need to get a sense of perspective. This is the most civil way to weaken the Russian military long-term. It will work. Sorry that it also makes your companies weak. If it wouldn't, Putin would just grab the money from your companies, as the Russian government has already threatened. (Weird move, but I guess they believe they can spin this into anti-Western sentiment.)

And what would the alternative be? Putin has not only started a war against an independent nation, he has also just - indirectly, but pretty much overtly - threatened the whole world with thermonuclear war. That would also turn Russia into radioactive ashes. You think world community should just stand there and watch, do nothing?

How much say does Namecheap's CEO have over the worlds use of Russian gas and oil? Probably as much say as I have over here in the US: None.

As with a sibling commenter, you're asking the CEO to fight with the weapons you wish he had, not the weapons he has. The CEO, the company he runs, are not "the west".

That someone who's on your side is inherently supplying money in the form of taxes to their Gov who is committing war crimes. We don't want sanctions to continue indefinitely, just until they get their troops out of Ukraine.

> If you have the ability to hit the Russian government where it hurts

Attacking my domains doesn't hurt the Russian government in any way. More than that, it has been the government's strategy to slowly close global internet to have more control.

I wasn't collecting a lot of info on this. But I can give you one small example.

https://www.indiehackers.com/product/mkdev-me/russia-blocked...

I occasionally come across websites that I cannot access.

Don't take it as a complaint. I just want to show you that the rock has been thrown not at the actual aggressor.

> So I'm also very angry at you, for screwing me over

Just out of curiosity, how are you screwed? Is it so hard to move to a different registrar? It's not like you are being kicked out from a cloud provider, which would indeed be a pain in the ass.

If you just had most if not all international payment methods stop, your only option now is to transfer your domains to a russian state owned or controlled entity which should be obvious why it could be problematic.

Commenter said they are fleeing Russia, should have more options available outside the country, no?

If they’re fleeing they’re not yet out, and foreign payments have been stopped.

> Just out of curiosity, how are you screwed? Is it so hard to move to a different registrar?

Normally, if you pay for a service for a year and then it ends after a couple months by surprise, you could describe that as being screwed.

> Additionally, and with immediate effect, you will no longer be able to use Namecheap Hosting, EasyWP, and Private Email with a domain provided by another registrar in zones .ru, .xn--p1ai (рф), .by, .xn--90ais (бел), and .su. All websites will resolve to 403 Forbidden, however, you can contact us to assist you with your transfer to another provider.

Looks like a bunch of people were kicked from Namecheap's cloud services with 0 notice though. Or do you mean that these services are relatively simple, and it would be a pain to migrate from a service provider who provides much more complex services with 0 notice?

The list of countries that the US has invaded is so deep. We must have solidarity with each-other and hold sociopathic leaders accountable, the way current sanctions are being structured is imo targetting civilians much more than russian elite or oligarchs. I wish nothing but peace for Russian and Ukrainian people, good luck friend.

so, putin was right! the west hate us! russophobia!

please...

Nobody hates Russians. Hell, I like Russians a lot. But this is war. World is unfair. I hope you see your "sanction" is such a minor grievance if compared to people that just died in an unjust war. That's why it would have been more elegant and with decorum just to be silent and accept this without whining that (omg!) your domain needs to move.

I can't transfer domains to another domain registrar because I have to pay "Transfer Fee". I can't do this because the payment through my Russian cards does not go through. Now I need to go to the Russian domain registrar and pay them to transfer domains from NameCheap.

I hope you take this same stance against USA and their drone strikes of civilians. I don't see how any good company can anyway work with those people either.

also, we've preemptively invaded two countries (UN war crimes also) and our oligarchs get to keep their mansions and yachts and none of them will ever see the inside of a prison cell. we should absolutely condemn Putin, but I wish we'd also lock up our own war criminals.

afghanistan was a justified invasion

I do remember seeing the Afghan submarines off the east coast of Florida. Thank god we got there in time to put a stop to it. Remember when we intercepted their intercontinental missiles that they launched from Kabul towards Houston?

Should Chinese residents be concerned?

Or Israeli?

Or USA? I'm remembering something about a fake vial of anthrax being held up at the UN by the US government to justify the illegal Iraq War.

The current Vice President isn't an oil company executive so invading an OPEC member state isn't likely in the cards for at least another two years. Plus, there was that whole "I'm trying to kill your dad" thing.[0]

[0]https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/bad-blood-saddam-a...

We've never focused any of our business in China with intention. I didn't want our company to acquise and sell it's soul to do business there so we purposely avoided it all these years. We may have some customers there but not very many that I am aware of.

You focused your business in Russia with intention then?

If so, it seems strange to give them focus, then take the service away because of what their government that they have no control over has done.

If not, then why the inconsistent policies with Russian citizens vs Chinese citizens?

Either way, I don't support involving citizens if it can be avoided. Oligarchs I could understand, similar to the state sanctions, but everyday citizens doesn't make sense.

I do use you guys, but I'll be moving as I don't want my domain provider in any political events or targeting citizens. It's a shame because your bitcoin support was nice.

Russian developers are already having bank account issues, now you spring this on them. It's really not helping the situation. They have nothing to do with these events. You're disconnecting them from the world further.

>Russian developers are already having bank account issues, now you spring this on them. It's really not helping the situation. They have nothing to do with these events. You're disconnecting them from the world further.

This is the point.

In a war, most of the people that end up fighting are innocent to some extent. This is economic warfare. This is Namecheap's volley.

By definition a civilian is not fighting. This policy mainly hurts civilians and doesn't harm the regime at all. Namecheap's "volley" is virtue signaling and exploiting an event at the expense of it's innocent Russian customers who trusted their brand. Why not just target oligarchs like other sanctions?

Simply donating to charities helping in the conflict would help the world a lot more and you could still write your blog post if you wanted. I guess going after the customers you collected is more viral though.

>By definition a civilian is not fighting.

They might not be bearing arms, but they are contributing to the russian economy.

Without the presence of nuclear weapons, NATO forces would be bombing moscow right now, causing significantly more economic disruption and disruption to civilians.

It's war.

> They might not be bearing arms, but they are contributing to the russian economy.

First, that's a very weak justification to attack civilians. Second, how does stopping them from paying for a non-local service help?

> Without the presence of nuclear weapons, NATO forces would be bombing moscow right now, causing significantly more economic disruption and disruption to civilians.

I doubt it, there's a reason Ukraine isn't in NATO, but thank God for nuclear deterrence. I don't want WW3, some people seem to be jumping at the bit for it.

> It's war.

Not ours. I support aid, nothing else.

-- EDIT [reached post limit, replying to below] --

> It's causing a disruption and lessening the productivity of the Russian economy

No it's not, if anything now more Russians will go to domain providers based in their country, keeping the money in their economy.

> If you're Russian. It is your war.

I'm not Russian. I'm not Ukrainian. Therefore it's not my war.

It's causing a disruption and lessening the productivity of the Russian economy

>Not ours. I support aid, nothing else.

If you're Russian. It is your war.

>They might not be bearing arms, but they are contributing to the russian economy.

I didn't realize we were in a total war. What's next? Drone strikes so the "economy" shrinks?

NATO members can not risk drone striking Russian territory due to the risk of a nuclear war.

Without nukes Moscow would be under heavy bombing right now

Just keep looking out for when they attack a western/white majority country. Then, yes.

> We haven't blocked the domains, we are asking people to move.

Putin has announced recently that cross-border payments in USD and EUR are to be blocked. Which means that most Russians affected by this won't be able to pay for a registrar outside of Russia.

People here have mentioned transferring their domain names to NIC.RU, the state-owned registrar. Which means that Putin actually receives more money because of this.

Speaking of taxes. What about people who used the domains for personal use? Or for non-profit orgs?

> Putin has announced recently that cross-border payments in USD and EUR are to be blocked. Which means that most Russians affected by this won't be able to pay for a registrar outside of Russia.

THIS

I've paid upfront exactly because of this, I was expecting some kind of ban of cross-border bank transfers. The same reason I've paid for my VPN upfront. No one in Russia, especially those who are politically active, can't really go around without some kind of self-hosted infrastructure.

Now, should Namecheap lag even a little bit with a transfer, which I've HAD to pay for (thankfully, I was able to use other provider rather than nic.ru), I will be left without my private XMPP service, self-hosted e-mail and a lot of stuff which makes my communications at least relatively safe.

While making such moves, they just made my life more dangerous, at time when government already looks for someone on the inside to blame.

> thankfully, I was able to use other provider rather than nic.ru

May I ask you which one you transferred your domains to?

I would prefer not to disclose this due to concerns to my personal safety. Thank you for understanding.

Wouldn't that mean those people couldn't pay namecheap anyway?

These people have already pre-paid namecheap services.

> Which means that Putin actually receives more money because of this.

When you cut a country off from trade, obviously some agents within that country are going to get more business.

So we shit on the people while we make Putin's friends richer?

Most registers accept other currencies too, like GBP, CAD or AUD which you didn't mention as being blocked.

USD is a shorthand for any foreign currency in Russia. It's really hard to pay for anything in anything other than roubles right now in Russia (which is especially hard if you're trying to leave the country).

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-bans-forex-transf...

Putin receives not only more money, it also makes censorship easier.

> NIC.RU, the state-owned registrar.

But without SWIFT, will they have trouble to pay the ICANN fee?

Probably not:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Internet_Law

> Which means that Putin actually receives more money because of this.

Realistically how much money are we talking about?

About 10 minutes worth of oil supplies to Germany.

If everyone follows namecheap, this will be a boost to the Russian economy. Putin will be very thankful for namecheap's generous donation of all Russian customers to Russian owned businesses.

That’s not how global economies work.

Countries depend on each other for goods and natural resources.

North Korea is largely isolated economically and they’re not thanking the world for their self-sufficiency.

Check out Russia’s top 10 imports:

https://www.worldstopexports.com/russias-top-10-imports/

They don’t produce enough computers, machinery, vehicles, etc. to support their population.

If those imports get cut off no one is thanking Putin. You can’t just spin up a national car company or a pharmaceutical company that quickly to compensate. It’s just a loss as quality of life and consumer spending goes down, dragging the economy down with it.

Russia already tried this back when they were called the USSR and it was a disaster. Their envoys to DC thought our American grocery stores were staged because they couldn’t believe the US had fresh fruit available to the average citizen and no bare shelves.

> North Korea is largely isolated economically and they’re not thanking the world for their self-sufficiency.

North Korea is trying to establish itself on a foundation of self-reliance. Namecheap's actions confirm the importance of their philosophy.

Your "That’s not how global economies work." conveniently skips over that namecheap has a large number of Russian customers but probably zero NK customers. North Korea doesn't apply, except as a guide on how Putin can make Russia more self-reliant in the face of NATO.

> You can’t just spin up a national car company or a pharmaceutical company that quickly to compensate.

But Russia already has several major car companies, several major pharmaceutical companies, and several web hosting companies...

Webhosts would probably be the easiest to quickly spin up, especially since it would be company #25 or #125, not the first ones to pave the road.

You seem completely unaware of the entire 100 years of sanctions practice Russia has, as if Russia would be starting from scratch instead of their long established home grown industries.

Which means more tax money! This is so true.

Pardon my ignorance, but doesn't nic.ru already make money for each .ru domain that is registered?

Much like Verisign makes money for each .com/.net and Affilias makes money for each .name/.org that is registered?

Isn't the whole point of running a registry that you also get to collect some sort of fee for running the service?

Which is why a lot of Russians don't use .ru domains. But Namecheap throws them out anyway.

I am an American and lucky not to have anything in Russia but as a namecheap customer, I urge you to please be patient with people and give them time to move. I understand the decision you made and it is your right to do so but please do not block someone just because they couldn't do it by a certain date. I am sure you know but empathy is really needed right now. Your March 6 deadline worries me.

We'll definitely consider extending the deadline if it is causing problems.

How will you determine if it's causing problems, and at what point in the next 5 days will you potentially start those considerations?

We'll extend it for three weeks and if someone needs more time, I'll ask our support to make exceptions.

What is the probability that you would simply revert this decision based upon community feedback?

What if it's a historical blog without someone checking their email?

You guys are nuts.

I don't think I can continue being a Namecheap customer if you're going to treat my patronage as a political bartering chip. What is happening in Russia right now is unequivocally abhorrent, but the efforts you're making are completely meaningless if you're just going to walk them back on a case-by-case basis. It's almost like such a sweeping action might have serious, collateral damage while also doing nothing to dissuade the war crimes that Russia is carrying out right now.

If you object to specific companies/governments using your service for wrongdoing, then address those cases individually. Pulling the rug out from an entire nation of users is horribly short-sighted and makes me question the values that made me use Namecheap in the first place.

Why don't you extend it to three weeks for everyone?

Why are you giving an unrealistic deadline when the transfer takes 5-7 days?

You are making a call right now that you will come to regret not unlike Matthew Prince (Cloudflare) did. Your reasoning is in the right spot, but the erosion of trust and the blanket nature of your decision right now is going to hurt you more than help anything.

I'd urge you to reconsider - if not I'll reconsider my business as well (not Russian related at all).

> that you will come to regret

This is news to me. I've not seen anything from Prince or Cloudflare that demonstrates they thought they made a bad decision.

Could you mention what was the Cloudflare decision you are referring to? I must have missed the news cycle. Thanks.

They are likely referring to how Cloudflare dropped DDOS protection for Daily Stormer and 8chan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudflare#Free_Speech_Debate

>Your reasoning is in the right spot, but the erosion of trust and the blanket nature of your decision right now is going to hurt you more than help anything.

Sometimes people are willing to take a sub-optimal decision in order to uphold what they believe in. Not everything has to have a positive ROI or an in-depth positive risk analysis

Agreed. While I politically agree with the Namecheap CEO in this case (which by the way, is a total coincidence), I'll move all of my domains out of Namecheap for the likely scenario that in the future the Namecheap CEO won't agree with me politically, since apparently now arbitrary political opinion determines if I can do business with them.

To be a voice on the other side. Cloudflare's call to stop supporting the white supremacist website that was boasting that cloudflare was supporting them is one of the reasons why I'm now a cloudflare customer. And while I currently use other registrars, this call is the strongest reason I've ever had to become a namecheap customer.

I'd much rather do business with people with morals and integrity, than those without. That's for moral reasons and business reasons, people with morals are less likely to screw you.

That’s tottaly understandable. As a russian I just want you to know, that Namecheap do not harm our elite who gains from the government policies, they harm people like me, who are trying to built a blog.

Do not want to doubt your words, but there is not much moral in this.

Cloudflare is a near-monopoly in its segment, Namecheap is not. There are plenty of alternatives.

Cloudflare is absolutely a false comparison. Punishing Nazis is a good thing. Punishing all Russians for the actions of a government they have no say in based solely on their nationality is being a Nazi (which is not a good thing).

It would be rightful, if only Namecheap wouldn't deny me reimbursement for their move. =( They're just getting away with the money.

FYI "ensure" is misspelled as "insure" on the banner that shows on every page.

> People that are getting angry need to point that at the cause, their own government.

I'm in this thread getting angry and I live in California. Are you prepared to be consistent by looking into my government's "war crimes and human rights violations"?

If the US started bombing Ukraine, would you really complain about Ukrainians cutting off American access to their services?

Would you give me a list of "wrong" things I shouldn't do, or "wrong" places I shouldn't live, in order to not have my service terminated in the future? I live in Turkey sometimes. Am I in danger of losing my Namecheap account if Erdoğan (the dictator) does something even more crazy than usual, in the future?

Of course you are. Any service provider will have the power to deny you further service. Businesses are going under because they were exposed to sanctions due to trading mostly in Russian goods. They can't really do much about that either.

There would be a point in your words, if only Namecheap wouldn't refuse to reimburse me money for terminated service!

It seems the answer is clearly Yes, you are in danger of losing your account if Erdogan does something crazy. I'm confused why you would ask this question. Russians are being banned for the crazy actions of Putin, why wouldn't Turks be if their country engaged in similar actions.

You are only confused because you take it for granted that countries of the first world can do whatever they want and don't comprehend that people in other countries take it as double standards

Yup. Americans weren't banned when they warred on Iraq and Afghanistan and killed a million people over some dude in a cave.

It's a joke!

Arab oil embargo? North Korea? Several countries embargo the United States.

It's because first world countries (especially U.S.) are not being banned at all.

Just “contact their support” or be on the lookout here on hn and CEO will sure be “making exceptions” in hn comments. Don’t fret.

> Am I in danger of losing my Namecheap account if Erdoğan (the dictator) does something even more crazy than usual, in the future?

Yes. To keep your account active, please simply instigate a revolution against Erdoğan and achieve regime change. Thanks.

It seems clear that the answer is you are in danger of losing much more than a domain if Erdogan does something crazy. You're in danger of losing your ability to do business with other countries at all. You're in danger of being conscripted into the army and sent to your death (or dying resisting said conscription orders). Hell, you're in danger of the crazy thing just being Erdogan deciding to sentence you to death for a made up crime.

To some degree there are just inevitable risks in life, but it's absolutely in your interest to influence your government into doing as few terrible things as possible, and to move to one that does less terrible things, and I for one think that's a very good thing.

What are the steps people should do, in your opinion, that help you influence totalitarian government?

I wonder how western people influence their governments to stop buying russian gas and make russian oligarchs even richer. Though, I agree that thrre are inevitable risks in life, I still think it’s a very ignorant thing to say, that people, who live under the dictatorship should just go and change how things are. I hope you’ll never experience living in a country where people are killed for opinions and prisoned for likes and reposts on the internet.

HN skews young so unrealistic platitudes make their way into these threads frequently. When these people grow up they may or may not learn that "life is not that simple", depending on their comfort level while growing. Those outside the US and West in general probably already know better than to say things as simple as "Why not just overthrow the government stupid?"

I'm not Turk. Good assumption though.

Are you sure this will help your objective?

Putin is a maniac and his war is horrible.

But as you've probably seen from all the 'prisoners of war' videos out of Ukraine, most soldiers don't want to fight this war.

Russians that are savvy enough to setup their own domain, will also be the ones that use a VPN to read foreign news. Very few in the Russian "tech scene" like Putin.

Shutting down their means of communication may make it harder for them to stage demonstrations, etc.

Instead, you should "magically" add emails to their inboxes, with e.g. Zelenskyy's speech to the Russian people, or add banners when they login to control panels etc.

(I'm not Russian btw, I live in another European country and not a customer)

Tampering with your customers data would destroy confidence in their business and might actually be a violation of the law.

Probably, but I'm not talking about legality here. In war people do a lot of illegal things.

I'm just saying, banning this people are probably not having the desired effect.

Showing an alternative point of view would be more effective.

That said, I don't think this is the right crowd. My guess is that 90% of them are already heavily against Putin.

> But as you've probably seen from all the 'prisoners of war' videos out of Ukraine, most soldiers don't want to fight this war.

You should not believe them. They might be just lying.

> But as you've probably seen from all the 'prisoners of war' videos out of Ukraine, most soldiers don't want to fight this war.

Most soldiers? How many remorseful POWs have you seen vs. the ~200k soldiers actively participating in the war?

Some POWs will say almost anything to not get killed and have a chance at freedom again. Just like in a trial, a statement or confession made under duress is not valid and they’re likely under extreme duress and afraid for their lives.

Be very careful forming opinion about Russia's army based on these videos. These videos are intended to help other Russian soldiers decide to surrender ("you'll be treated well" message) and that's about it.

They are ruthless and this war is going to be absolutely ruthless if it will not stop soon. Russians had no trouble bombing and shelling sieged cities, hospitals, and even UN convoys in Syria, and they'll do it in Ukraine, too. They're alredy using cluster munitions in the city streets, shit like butterfly mines, etc., and it's going to be a lot worse once they set up heavy artilery and complete the sieges.

This time they'll not be able to lie about it in the west all that easilly, judging by the reaction in my country. Xenophobia will be less of a hindrance to seeing things clearly, at least in some eastern european countries, compared to their Syrian involvement.

But I'm already starting to see the same justifications being used to bomb the cities, as was used in Syria.

How about you just stop collecting taxes in Russia instead of cutting them off?

Either way, I'm noting you down for BDS.

I suggest you also employ people in Palestine, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Myanmar, Kashmir, etc.

Everything about this screams immaturity. You didn't think about this, how it would affect others, whether or not it would actually improve anything for anyone, etc. This doesn't affect the Russian government in any way whatsoever. You are not making a difference, not a positive one anyway. You're acting purely based on spite, attacking mostly innocent people in any way you can purely because they are living under a government you disagree with, not necessarily by choice. I don't know what led you to believe that russian citizens can just wake up one day and decide to kick out the government, but I am sorry to say that this is not true.

Thankfully I don't use namecheap, but if I did, I would be moving my domains out of it right now, russian or not. I do not wish to rely on a service run by people who may throw a childish tantrum and terminate my service at any time due to something I may not have any control over.

> I don't know what led you to believe that russian citizens can just wake up one day and decide to kick out the government, but I am sorry to say that this is not true.

Dude, that is how it works. Due to the nukes, the only ones who can remove Putin is the Russian people.

A large percentage of Russians still support Putin, the sanctions are a great motivator for fixing that issue.

>Dude, that is how it works

No it isn't

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30506536

A great motivator? What a way to misunderstand basic human psychology.

Sanctions just give dictators more excuses to blame everything on external enemies. I honestly don't understand how anyone thinks they can work.

What other alternative reaction to the invasion would you suggest?

Admit to the Ukranians that they have been cruelly used as a cat's paw to prod at the Russian and there never was any "Western" intention to support them.

Make it clear to Ukraine that their only hope really is being a neutral buffer state.

Roll back the Romanian and Polish missile bases and the Turkish tracking systems.

Sign the USA back up to all the missile treaties that they have backed out of.

That ought to secure another 40 years of fragile peace in Europe.

Or we could just keep shoving weapons into the Ukraine. Wonder how that will work out? I mean weapons always make things better.

While I am so frustrated that everyone is cheering on the powerless nation in a brutal fight they can't win, you just gave a most sensible solution that can spare us a total nuclear war.

Send weapons to help the Ukrainian defense (already being done). Also apply sanctions, but only targeted to people in power (e.g. freezing assets in Switzerland, not buying more gas from Russia). I'm aware that these can indirectly affect laypeople (e.g. not buying gas creating unemployment in the gas sector) but that's just life. But what I find dumb is sanctions targeted explicitly at laypeople. Those who don't support their government don't deserve them, and those who do get more reasons to close ranks with their government because "the enemy" is now actively making their lives miserable.

And the only way Russian people may get information and organise is online. So let’s disrupt operations of whatever Russian web remains accessible. Watching more propaganda TV should help.

Everyone should respect government imposed sanctions and laws. Infrastructure services should not discriminate beyond that. Denying service based on nationality of the client is akin to discriminating by gender, race, or faith.

Also it’s ok to pull from any market for whatever reason, and not renewing contracts, but kicking paying customers before the term of the (prepaid) service is over is just not cool.

I think you replied to the wrong comment, as I wasn't talking specifically about Namecheap.

I was simply responding to the claim that it's impossible for the Russian people to remove Putin from office.

It's possible, but not without civil war.

Dude, other countries also have nukes. Other countries are buying russian gas and oil. Other countries can just easily wake up one day and stop buying russian gas. Other countries can also send their troops to ukraine to help. There are a lot of things other countries can do to get rid of the dictator. So why don’t they?

Do they not?

Just because you disagree with someone doesn't mean they didn't think it through. I'm a customer for 10 years and will continue to be after this.

I might actively move more domains to my namecheap account after this.

I'm about to do this!

Ukrainian citizens are doing just fine at kicking your governments ass at this time, sacrificing their lives while at it. Time to do more and rise up. If they can do it, you can. Take control against your own corrupt and bloodthirsty government, at least you won't be under threat of nuclear attack and constant carpet bombing like the ukrainians while you're doing it.

You have no idea what does it mean to be in opposition to government in Russia or Belarus. You have apparently no idea how long and how hard people fought there for the change. How often do you take control of your own country? Do you do it before breakfast or after it? Do you have any advice?

I've seen some uprisings and they've been put down and definitely respect and sympathize with those people and as I said we will try not apply this policy towards those by making exceptions but those people are a minority. In fact Navalny, is one of my personal heroes. Probably one of the bravest men I've seen in my lifetime but most Russians don't feel this way. There needs to be more done.

May I ask in numbers how many people do you think support Putin’s regime in Russia, and where did you get this “most Russians” from? Navalny is my personal hero too btw, and I went to protest every time he was arrested. First time was in 2012. Did you wait for 10 years to make an action against russian government by asking people to move their domains (aka deplatforming)? The fact that your business was operating in Russia seems like you didn’t give a f*k about being moral. In 2014 russian military occupied Crimea. Did you just in Feb 2022 realized how bad russian government is? Seems like it didn’t stop your company from making money on russian users for multiple years.

It's nice to know that you're certain Putin wouldn't ever use nuclear weapons against is own people, or that if he launched at another country the retaliation wouldn't hit any Russians who are against him.

everyone that is affected by this war is inconvenienced ( mild way to say F'd up) but, if a company that is totally in a country being attacked by an aggressor. that said company has every right to respond in any way to to try and live to defeat said agreesor. sorry that you may feel like you are being singled out. But. that is life. Hopefully there is enough russian blowback against their leadership that makes a change for russians. As n american that grew up during the heights of the cold war and all the doom and gloom both our countries talked about. The day the the Berlin wall fell and the Russian people themselves felt the relief of obtaining freedoms of hope and prosperity, let me tell you all, we americans didnt feel like we won the cold war. we felt relieved that the war was over and life would be great for everyone. now sad that hasnt happened

This is a tone-deaf comment. All of us who otherwise agree with your position and support it: you are alienating us.

I have friends and acquaintances who fled, or stayed and had their eardrums blown out by flash-bangs at protests.

My friends' student was raped in prison for attempting to "take control against her own corrupt and bloodthirsty government", as you put it.

Where were you in 2020? What domains did Namecheap drop then at a week's notice in a flurry of support?

Now you are preaching to the choir (i.e. the very "IT-shniki" whose support for your position was never even in doubt), and calling them too apathetic or too meek or too unworthy.

I get it: you see suffering, in your own ranks, you have power, and you want to use that power to do good.

But please listen when we explain to you that you're revelling in scoring on your own net. This action hurts your own team and not the opposing one.

Perhaps the issue with your line of thinking is here:

> This action hurts your own team and not the opposing one.

The majority of us in the west don't regard this as team west vs. team Russia. We regard it as democracy vs. Putin. Seeing it as anything else is playing into his rhetoric.

For the CEO of Namecheap, in this context the two teams are "people who support what I support" and "people who don't".

This action hurts the CEO’s "people who support what I support" group, and to add insult to injury his replies here malign those very same people.

The fact that you (and several people who replied to me) assume I am russian despite me not once stating such says a lot about your current state of mind. Relax, take a deep breath, and think your actions through. You are angry at people you've never met and feel desperate to divide them into the "with me" or "against me" camps to justify your anger.

Please donate a few bucks to CAGE or something to address Guantanamo Bay too, I know you can.

War by its very nature creates economic disruptions. Today there are business who are liable to be out of commission not because they have ideological differences but because their employees are uninterred corpses lying where they were murdered or their offices are bombed out husks. Expected business that by its very nature crosses borders between victim states and aggressor states to continue as normal is in fact itself the unreasonable position. It's like standing in the streets where the bombs are falling and shouting loudly about your sandwich being late.

Lets take a moment to examine the language you are using. The language given described the reason they feel they need to take the action they are taking even if you disagree with their reasoning but you have baselessly redefined it as "spite" and a "childish tantrum". It looks like exactly the opposite.

They have chosen as is their right not to do business with some customers and you suggest that by forcing clients to spending a few hours migrating to another providers they are "attacking them".

The only people being attacked are those who are getting shot and blown up. Tone down your rhetoric and don't make events of international and historic scope about you. Expand your perspective.

This kind of reaction is exactly why more businesses need to take this approach. It's painfully inconvenient for a Russian who has an interest in being able to use the service, and the more this occurs, the less anyone is happy to just sit by.

Yes, I'm sure the thing that will finally lead the russian people to rise up against Putin will be some random non-russian domain registrar forcing them to transfer their domains to a russian one. We truly are living in the age of armchair activists, huh?

You're missing the point. It's supposed to inconvenience the Russian people.

You can't have it both -- benefit from western companies and technology, but keep a leader in power that is completely indifferent to any human life and suffering other than (arguably) the one of the Russian people.

We like to think that we're all just citizens under the rule of the few, but we're all complicit in who governs us, whether we like to admit to it or not.

In the west we're all very aware that any kind of regime change in Russia will involve bloodshed amongst innocent Russian people, but that is already happening right now -- except you've exported the genocide to your neighbors, Belarus and Ukraine, and that is unacceptable.

> keep a leader

it’s funny sometimes how can people from 1st world countries be so ignorant. We don’t and we can’t keep a leader. Russia is a totalitarian country, where elections don’t work. We cannot vote him out. Democracy doesn’t work in totalitarian regimes. That’s why they are called totalitarian. Oh and by the way, as a representative of a western country you could also help ukrain by stop buying russian gas and oil to stop sponsoring russian oligarchs. How about you go and make your government use exclusively renewable energy right now? Otherwise, it seems like this genocide in Ukrain is as much your choice as it’s a choice or russian people.

We do know that your ballot there doesn't count. The "vote" is the populace going in red square despite all the odds stacked against them.

That’s exactly what people do. Not just Red Square. Everywhere in the world. And if it was that easy to change things by protesting, this animal Putin would be already behind the bars. Your comments make me think that you haven’t been in a situation where you feel scared for your life when you are just expressing your opinion. And this is exactly the situation most of russian people are. Despite that, a lot of them are still fighting the regime. And those who don’t, you can’t blame them for not wanting to die or spend years in prison.

My question about the west stop buying gas left unanswered. You can’t even put your money for the heating at stake, but you are asking from russians to sacrifice their lives. How is it not hypocritical?

Russian oligarchs are sanctioned in EU since today.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

Best comment so far. The mail ia indeed immature and the actions are unproductive.

>"There are plenty of other choices out there when it comes to infrastructure services so this isn't "deplatforming"."

This is still 'de-platforming', even though there are alternatives. There are alternatives to every service that has 'de-platformed' people, but it doesn't change what you're doing.

Well actually lets take youtube. Being removed from youtube doesn't keep you from being heard at all by people willing to directly seek you out but it does directly keep your content being organically exposed to youtube users potentially greatly decreasing your actual exposure.

Unlike youtube domain registration is fungible. Moving from namecheap to <insert registrar> means your computer is silently switched from talking to foo vs bar with no apparent difference to the end user.

It only becomes and effective means of deplatforming if your registrar doesn't allow you to transfer your domain or you literally can't find a registrar who will accept you.

Or if you get kicked out from the service you paid upfront for and not being able to pay the other registrars because outside payments are blocked.

My domains will be moving from your service as a result.

I just moved mine to them as a result.

Does your principled stand extend to never buying oil from BP after they dumped $14Bn shares in Rosneft, or is it just dogpiling here?

Is dumping those shares supporting or harming Russia?

I get that, and you're totally entitled to do this. And you're probably right that ends justify the means. And, probably, total damage will be worth it. But, in my insignificant personal case, I will be busy moving domains and paying for transfers instead of doing what I've been doing and spending money on what I've been spending it for the last 5 days, helping people detained and/or arrested for participating in anti-war protests (as a volunteer, see https://ovdinfo.org/).

And, you know, those people you want to point at their own government, they won't get it. They're brainwashed by Putin's propaganda which has reached true Goebbels level. It was going there for a while, Putin's regime began with gradually shutting down free media 20 years ago. Yes, people do have internet, and Russian internet is full of Putin's propaganda. Russian authorities are banning websites telling the truth (yes there's a government powered DPI firewall which every major ISP has to install by law). And they're working on a law which will make it a crime with 15 years of sentence just for calling the war the war. So I wouldn't count on that. The only thing that might work is hearing the truth from friends and families, but it's very hard to talk to those people. I'm trying, though, when there's still at least some reasoning.

I'm not complaining. While I did try to fight against the regime since its beginning, I could've done more. We screwed this up, and we're responsible, and all the inconveniences we might have cannot be compared to the suffering of people of Ukraine. Just saying.

Hey I saw a post on a local FB group today from an Aussie company who worked with a Russian dev years ago and had their contact details on one of 50 domains, and they're being asked to move everything.

They said support is not responsive, any way you can be more discriminating about the level of Russian involvement that will trigger a suspension? I will post a link to your statement here for them.

Dude, right now all of us are in deep shock, while:

- some are trying to find their relatives in Ukraine

- some are coordinating and volunteering

- some are trying to get themselves and their families outside of Russia (which gets harder by the minute because of prices and sanctions)

- some are trying to smuggle at least some of the money outside, because their entire life savings are now blocked

- some are trying to preserve what they have despite ruble and market crashing

- some are hunkering down with what they have and their loved ones, trying to stockpile some food before prices skyrocket

and no one has any time to cope and process anything - don't forget usual workloads, too. planning for a week feels like it's already a strategic, not a tactical scope

I get what you're trying to do, but can't you at least give more time for everyone? Right now I need to drop everything and migrate my DNS as well because my private email that I use for docs will stop working in 6 days. And to figure out how to pay the transfer fees while doing all that. It's very much fucking stressful already.

edit: I've worded that badly - I'm not complaining, I'm just asking for a bit longer grace period for everyone. It's very easy to miss an email for 6 days during these times. All of these issues are obviously dwarfed by what Ukrainian people are going through right now.

We will give you more time to move, please reach out to our support and they will take care if it.

Are you giving more time to everybody or just the people who complain?

it already mentions "by march 6", i think it's enough time

I disagree, 6 days is not enough time. Especially for people who are not tech savvy.

Bad move.

Oh you are right, for some reasons i read this as "May 6".. indeed, 6 days seems rushed

I think it's a very reasonable consequence for voting in a dictator and a mass murderer.

Did they really vote him in though? If anyone was going to rig and election…

No they didn't. He stayed in power via manipulation and assassinations and things like that. Cannot blame the people. (Well, a few, but in general.) Stalin also wasn't the people's fault.

There's been some estimates of how many votes Putin would get, if there were real elections, no vote fraud, no threats, opposition politicians hadn't been killed or imprisoned, everyone got to vote, didn't get bribed to vote on Putin -- and then from what I read, a large majority would vote against him.

Putins approval rating is around 70% (measured before the Ukraine invasion). His highest approval rating was about 88% back when Crimea was annexed. So he has broad public support and the population seem to be largely in favor of the expansionist policies, at least until now.

these are official government statistics, am I right?

By all accounts, he didn’t need to, but this goes so much further than just Putin. Local elections exist, they have a bicameral legislative body that approved this invasion, they originally approved the authoritarian constitution that allowed this to happen, they continue to prop up strong men in their culture and in their government.

This is a continuous choice by the Russian people to support men like Putin and Yeltsin, and it has massive negative consequences for the rest of the world.

Of course it makes sense to make it marginally harder to register and maintain a domain on the Internet as a result. If that’s the price a small handful of Russians have to pay for all of this, they should be infinitely grateful.

As an independent observer on the last Duma (lower house of Russian parliament) elections, I can tell with certainty that these elections were rigged. Upper house of the parliament is not elected.

If Russian elections are not free and fair (which they likely aren't), and the Russian people are not revolting or leaving, they are complicit in the outcomes anyway.

How exactly you see a revolution of unarmed people against fully armed people that have no problem with hurting and killing others? Do you really think that average Russian has enough money to leave the country?

Not well! But the alternative is to let Putin kill and threaten people on your behalf, so that's not going well either. No good options here, but at least if you revolt or leave, he's not doing those things with your endorsement. "It's hard!" is not an excuse to tolerate war crimes.

And yes, I really think the average Russian has enough resources to leave the country, because you need zero resources to stand up from your chair and walk in a direction. If you're stopped, that's not your fault, you're actively trying.

So you’re saying that all Russian people should just die horrible death trying to go unarmed against National Guard (the force that exists specifically to beat up and torture protestors)...

...or just be shot trying to illegally cross the border.

You’re literally suggesting some sort of self-genocide of 150 million nation.

If you think the most effective way to overthrow the Russian government is to try to go 1 on 1 against the Russian National Guard, you're probably not going to last very long in Russia or anywhere else, for that matter.

Same if you think literally doing zero prep work to leave Russia has a high chance of success. If it's your only option, you're not thinking creatively enough.

It just seems like you're operating in a state of learned helplessness, which is immensely sad but not the only way to live.

Please, do tell me the most effective way to overthrow the Russian government. I’m a member of protest movement since my high school and I assure you that if you have some option none of us are aware of, I’ll carefully consider it.

Also please explain what “prep work” can an average Russian with monthly income about $450 can do to sucessfully leave Russia.

“Stop treating overthrowing your murderous government as your hobby.”, would probably be step one.

Until then you’re just cosplaying so you can sleep at night.

And it costs nearly nothing to legally cross a border, but yes if the options are, “Continue to live in Russia” or, “Illegally cross a border.” Then break the law.

Your suggestions completely lack any specific actions. What exactly do you think could be done by unarmed and disorganized (because Council of Europe didn’t care when Navalny was jailed despite ECHR decision) Russian people? Please, elaborate on your proposed strategy.

Residence of which country you can get without having a lot of money and/or good career like IT specialist? How do you think unarmed person can illegally cross a border guarded by armed people without getting killed?

Either my suggestions lack specific action or crossing the border of another country will get you killed. One or the other, not both.

And if you don’t know what an insurgency is or how to run one, that’s on you to figure out. It is the only moral option if you’re Russian and want to stay in Russia.

Your suggestions about revolution lack any specific actions, your suggestions about immigration are simply way to get killed.

“Lol just figure out how to overthrow heavily militarized government” is completely ignoring the obvious truth that this is simply impossible. It was probably possible some years ago with support from abroad, but the only thing international institutions cared about was cheap natural gas and oil, so they ignored violations of international law and treated Putin as a lawful president. So now we have decapitated opposition, silenced media (just today two independent media were banned) and 2% of Russians serving in police and military. It stops any seeds of revolution from ever growing.

If you think it's impossible to overthrow the Russian government, then you should leave, and you will not be shot by border guards for illegally trying to leave Russia, that's completely wrong.

It sounds like you're comfortable where you are, and need to justify it to yourself that your country is using your consent to commit atrocities that you're ultimately okay with as long as you remain comfortable.

That's cowardice.

How do you imagine nearly 150 million people, most of them very poor by European standards, leaving the country? Why do you even think this is a moral action?

Money used to invade Ukraine mostly comes from other countries buying Russian natural resources. If you want to stop the invasion, go and protest against _your_ government to make it stop buying Russian oil.

I’m staying so I can protest and try to sway the current governments intentions. It’s hard and dangerous, but it has more chances to succeed than overthrowing the government. I’m staying so I can help the protestors. I’m staying so I can actually _do_ something about the situation. Leaving the country is actually easy for me (unlike most Russian citizens), but I don’t think it’s the morally right action.

You think 150 million people can act in unison to leave Russia, but cannot act in unison to fight to retake Russia?

I think that says a lot about how you really feel, and it's not good.

It's increddibly shortsighted, It's cutting out people that is trying to fight with true information, leaving the propaganda unquestioned. This is why we won't cut internet to russia.

Here's an analogy, most people here are allergic to Trump. It would be the same to have blocked US people because Trump got elected.

Completely understandable, from my perspective. US citizens have a lot to answer for, just like Russian citizens, and should be held to account for their leadership choices.

They won't be, though, even if we assume they should be. "Holding Russian people to account", on the other hand, is emotionally easy and relatively consequence-free.

Careful with that, this justification was also used for the attack on the Twin Towers.

Yeah because dropping someone from your DNS registrar is the same thing as 9/11…

What a horrific and insensitive comment. Christ…

It would be the same to have blocked US people because Bush started an invasion that would cause hundreds of thousands to die. And I think that would be valid, certainly morally if not strategically.

I never voted for Putin and pretty sure that most of the Russian Namecheap clients never did. Namecheap was a safe harbour because the domain could be seized by the Russian authorities, and now it's act of betrayal of the loyal customers who payed many years in times when they needed them most. I've already received the emails from Russian registrars promising the discount, so this money would go to Russian companies. It's like ordering a taxi drive because of some urgent needs, paying in advance, and then the car stops in Mulholland Drive way and they declare you should call another taxi company within several minutes because you are Russian and the driver is Ukrainian.

This makes perfect sense to me; if you are Russian, you should be held accountable for your leadership choices (you didn’t vote for him, but you love and support people and a system that did) and acquiescence to rule by a man who is clearly evil.

I don’t think this is even close to the level of accountability necessary for the Russian people to see the gravity of their mistake.

You deserve isolation, in my opinion, for your marginal part supporting a system of corruption and mass murder. Some very small amount of Ukranian blood is on your hands, and that means you pay this minor economic cost.

This is victim blaming on an unprecedented scale. The average russian has zero control over the actions of the dicatorship, and thus can't be held accountable. Collective punishment for the actions of few is always wrong, especially when the collective has no control over the situation. You are blaming an entire nation for the grave crime of being born in the wrong place.

I have nothing but contempt for you.

No, I am blaming an entire nation for the attempted murder of another nation.

It’s naïve as hell to think the Russian people aren’t complicit in their government’s actions; Putin is not a dictator, and he is not the only evil actor in Russian government.

Collective punishment for the actions of the collective is not wrong, but a great way of meting out justice to those who have acted morally wrong, as the Russian people have.

You may have contempt for me, but I hold disgust and malice for the Russians here acting like they’re blameless for what’s happening in Ukraine; they’re just as proportionally responsible as Putin. He’s their leader, he’s their fault.

Why do you think this regime exists?? Do you think it's the expression of the will of the Russian people? Please, I beg of you, learn a little bit about the dismantling of the Soviet Union and the brazen interference in their elections by western powers, for the purposes of violently suppressing dissent against the bandits who are in charge today.

Also, I don't know what country you're in, but there is a HIGH chance that you do NOT want to be held accountable for the crimes it committed and will continue to commit.

So it’s a) not your fault, b) there’s nothing you can do and c) I’m just as bad as you?

Sorry but no. This regime exists because the Russian people allow it to exist, full stop. If you think there’s nothing you can do, that’s just your cowardice talking. The Ukranians are proving that one hundred fold.

I'm not Russian, I just have basic empathy

Apparently not enough for the Ukranians, who actually have no say in any of this.

What's up with every Russian answer on HN being brand new accounts? None of these responders had an account and now chose to speak up?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

Consequences for an authoritarian regime invading its neighbor aren’t suppose to be convenient.

Until very recently, rhetoric about sanctions was masked in polite fictions like "this is meant to target corrupt leaders" and "we fully support the people of the country in the struggle against their authoritarian leader," etc.

It is alarming how quickly this has shifted to open acknowledgment: "yeah, these measures are meant to punish ordinary people until they sacrifice their lives for regime change." This has always been the subtext, but I haven't seen it wielded so freely like this.

I wonder if this situation will change the framing of sanctions in other countries. Maybe we can stop pretending that sanctions aren't strictly meant to bend the population until they break.

There is a fine line between making it hurt for normal people and make the affirmation of Putins world view that they are under attack. People are already living with a lie their whole life, it doesn't help if we affirm this just when they start to see the light... Cutting of the people that is trying to get the truth to the population is very counter productive in this case.

And, People with internet domain names, tend to be younger, more against Putin already?

”It is alarming how quickly this has shifted to open acknowledgment”

The mask have been taken off. All we see is the cold face of war.

Something like that said the president of Finland. And the diplomatic paths were tried for months already.

We (the west) all know that sanctions are going to hit ordinary Russians, but also people outside the Russia. Nothing to compare with horrors in Ukraine. But it looks like we have currently no other option. Are we sliding to a new world war. That is what we try to avoid. We are already sending weapons but non-acting would seem we support the war Russia has started. Putin has went so far that it is unlikely that he will stop. We hope the change comes from the inside, and that he is stopped. I know, it is a naive thought.

This is a lose-lose situation for everyone.

At the same time we are in danger of escalating energy crisis, banking crisis and the climate change.

> Until very recently, rhetoric about sanctions was masked in polite fictions like "this is meant to target corrupt leaders"

I think this was always an excuse by economic interests trying to limit the scope of sanctions in hopes of reducing the business impact, at least that's how I've read it.

Sanctions are a flexible tool of warfare that scales from targeting leaders, to damaging the enemy's ability to replenish supplies, to total economic collapse so as to destroy the state's ability to function.

Just the people who complain, which seems reasonable. Quoting the GP:

"If more grace time is necessary for some to move, we will provide it."

It's the standard PR appeasement of companies - complain loudly in a place others might see, and we shall see to your needs. Thousands of others who might also be suffering and don't have the means to do so or don't know that this is how it works - well, too bad.

I just want to point out that this is the first time I've read a Russian resident's perspective on what's happening right now.

The overall picture I get in Western media is that Russians are being dragged into this against their will by Putin. People have started calling for sanctions on certain regime members and supporters, but have so far avoided more broadly demonizing the Russian populace. I hope it stays that way.

Good luck.

My understanding is that older Russians tend to be more supportive of the war.

Not only do they more broadly believe Ukraine isn’t a legitimate country independent of Russia, they’re also more likely to perceive threats from the west and the potential for Ukraine to become a contributor to the threat very quickly. They’ve witnessed conflicts materializing very quickly in the past, and they’re aware it could happen again. Ukraine has dramatically improved their military training, equipment, and size since Crimea. Given that alone it’s clear to see how many Russians might see Ukraine as a threat with their non-NATO status and demilitarization not being guaranteed.

Having said that, it seems Putin has been trying to encourage acceptance of war in Russia for months because evidently there isn’t a broad enough acceptance as it is. At least from the government’s perspective, as they’ve been planning this war for quite a while. I believe the necessity of the war from their perspective came sooner than expected, otherwise they likely would have been seeding the idea of the need for war much earlier. I’m not sure.

So there are certainly a lot of Russian people who believe the war is justified. I’m not sure what the ratios of for/neutral/against are, but I suspect they’re not especially lopsided. Unfortunately. It doesn’t seem there’s significant reason to believe Putin will back down, or that Russian people will force him to.

The whole country premise is based on war. Unfortunately the world only became global in the past 2 decades which means a lot of Russians (despite being kind) still haven't gotten up to speed on all available information including the propaganda they have been subjected.

I was born in Russia and emigrated in 1999. Till then, I only heard about the glory days of USSR and how we liberated the world of evil.

I moved to Czech Republic and went straight to school. Little did I know that Russia has a bad rep by being an occupant as well as textbooks describing completely different picture of the world. Including the facts of red army raping everything in their way to Berlin's parliament building.

If you would have grown up subject to propaganda for more than 30 years, you would probably turn out in a similar way.

Asking a person to think independently without expanding their peripheral brain thinking is super hard and almost impossible IMO. Curious if there are any scientific studies how to do it.

I am not defending people for "not-knowing" just trying to paint the picture of how it was living and growing up there compared to the rest of the world. All my friends who left Russia are against the war. Unfortunately the divide is also growing in Russia and I had to forgo several people I knew from childhood because they are adamant on war being justified and I am sure I am not the only one.

Years of brainwashing... also partially the reason why people haven't revolted already.

Thanks for that, it’s really helpful to get more insight from people closer to Russia, the people there, and countries close to it. Although I can find a lot of information online, I find it difficult to find the experiences and opinions of people who aren’t from North America. Language is likely a large part of that - I’m sure many of the people close to this simply aren’t hanging out and communicating in English in the places I am.

Brainwashing is certainly a term that comes to mind as I learn more about this, but one I have a hard time using since it can seem sort of like a slur from here in Canada. The truth is though that it seems us here in North America are somewhat brainwashed to fear and resent many parts of the world as well, including Russia. It’s scary. As I’ve tried to make sense of this by asking questions or generally discussing the current conflict online, I’ve been attacked for being pro-Putin or a Russian troll several times. I’m nothing of the sort, I never take a side, and I do my best to be objective, but many of the people I live with here are furious if you aren’t laser-focused on condemning the war and Russia. I’m absolutely opposed to the war, but banging that drum eternally doesn’t help me understand it any better.

Regardless, you’re making a great point. Questioning the war would be difficult for any human being if they were raised in a culture in which it was justifiable. How many Americans supported the Iraq war which ended as an abject failure with very little support? All that changed was that people were forced to face reality. The war didn’t make any more or less sense from the day it started. It’s easy to criticize Russia from across the world, but they’re no different from us here in Canada or the USA in that sense. As you mentioned, it’s remarkably difficult to break out of the sort of cultural mould we’re born and raised in.

Thanks for the response. I hope the friends and family you left in Russia are safe, whether they support the war or not.

English is not very widespread in Russia and ex-USSR countries to the south. Even the IT crowd among me knows very little of the language (enough to read an answer on StackOverflow or write a badly worded commit message).

And now I know why it's not being taught more widely, despite the obvious economic advantages this could provide. You don't want the population to be able to speak to their 'enemies' or read news from the other side easily. It's pretty obvious now the mad lunatic has been preparing the country for what's happening for about a decade, and he truly believed when he talked about the 'encirclement' and 'sending nukes to Florida'.

Trully Orwellian NEWSPEAK!

May be because langage is deeply tied to culture and sovereignety. foreigns langage are cultural weapons, just look how european countries are slowly but surely turning into a chimeric federation mimicing USA just by cultural war.

For exemple a simple brainwashing illustration in the west is the fact that Imperalism is synonym to weapons/war/bombs and all things related to military. While indeed the biggest treat and real imperalism is culural and linguistic.

Hollywood and affiliates are bigger treat than any US Battaillon into subverting and destroying nation.

And it's even more dangerous because im an active actor of my own subvertion, of my own languistic and cultural destruction like im forced to use English (not my native language to expose my opinion here)

>Hollywood and affiliates are bigger treat than any US Battaillon into subverting and destroying nation.

For dictators.

https://www.spyculture.com/documents-reveal-hollywood-cover-... https://www.spyculture.com/clandestime-213-homeland-security...

Read and understand your brainwashing

Culture is a threat? How many people have been killed by opera, symphonies and art galleries, compared to tanks, bombs, rifles?

If the people like a certain forms of culture more than others, well, then that's there preference and their freedom to choose. It doesn't harm anybody, and if you have something better to offer, go and tell people. Let them decide if they like it or not. That's not going to happen with tanks and bombs.

Has anybody ever died from speaking or listening to English? As ugly a language as it is, I prefer that 1,000,000 over having a grenade explode in my front porch.

If it's any consolation, there's a noticeable difference in the framing of this war from the US side. The West is slowly waking up to the fact that Putin has been waging a war for years without declaring it. It is being framed in the US media as Putin's War instead of the Russian Peoples' War. I think many recognize that ordinary Russian people are about to suffer greatly as collateral damage in his conquest for glory. Be well & stay safe.

I think you are right regarding limiting English teaching to prevent the population from consuming "enemy" media. Definitely also happening in China where they massively cracked down on English language tutoring two years ago. Probably due to the governments ongoing effort to ramp up nationalism and spread increasingly improbable narratives about current events and history.

"Definitely also happening in China where they massively cracked down on English language tutoring two years ago" - oh you really do not know How much the next two generations of China kids will be able to read in other languages!

Genuinely interested on what knowledge I don’t have, this prediction is based on?

Thanks for the kind words!

Precisely. Imagine your area of knowledge is like a circle, you think you kind of get 80% of it in terms of worldview and subjective opinions. Now some random people come in and saying you are wrong and there is this other big circle which is in order of magnitude 100x bigger which shrinks your knowledge and understanding. Its very difficult to recognise that we might not be understanding all the things. But just being open for trying to get the other side helps tremendously. Even understanding the root cause of why perhaps people even think that way?

It's kind of scary... and we tend to block the scary things. Because well... its easier.

The issue in the conflict such as this is that it's never black and white. And if someone is telling you that you are pro-putin by just not condemning Russia without hearing your reasons or just blatantly attacking you - thats very short-sighted and personally I just end the debate right there, because its not up to my standards of rationality.

There are obviously now messages coming through condemning US and EU for their actions in various conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Kosovo etc. And again, what is right and what is wrong? Never that easy to say - all depends on your personal context.

I wish we could have a conversation something like that: - Ok lets look at the claims: - Claim X - Claim Y - Claim Z

Alright, claim Y is not that simple, because remember what happened was A, B, C.

Ok valid point, but B is also not so certain because of G.

I feel like our world really needs more education on critical-thinking and meta-learning.

> There are obviously now messages coming through condemning US and EU for their actions in various conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Kosovo etc.

However strongly I am angered and scared by the current attack on Ukraine, I am also deeply shaken by questioning my own views. If one nation can be brainwashed into thinking that they are saving Ukraine from fascists, and they do not know they are brainwashed and think the other side is brainwashed... what am I brainwashed into? I already know I was also deceived big time (I totally believed that lie about WMDs in Iraq), what else is there? And I know that it can be argued that "western media" is more open and pluralistic, but don't Russians think the same about their media?

After seeing Brexit, Donald Trump, Covid, now Ukraine... we humans really need to figure out how to improve our ability to converge on models of reality closer to what really happens.

Anyway, thank you for shedding some light on the views from someone closer to Russia.

Western media has almost the same amount of propaganda unfortunately. And in Russian media is a small amount of truth...

Western media has nowhere near the same amount of propaganda. It is diverse and not controlled by the state. The west has many problems, and protecting democracy is a full time job.

With Ukraine, hundreds of countries are all seeing the same thing, independent journalists are watching.

There is no justification for escalating to a war which is what Putin has done. If he had sent troops into the regions already contested you could maybe argue that (even then it would be tenuous).

> It is diverse and not controlled by the state.

Western media isn’t controlled by the state but frequently acts in service to it. See Manufacturing Consent, by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky.

I haven't read that book and will add it to my reading list.

I'm not naive (but far from an expert). There are all kinds of problems with western democracy, capitalism and the media (in no particular order).

There is a vast difference between the 'western media problems' and the propaganda coming out of Russia though.

The narratives around refugees in Australia are a very good example at least one of the problems with western media. Referring to refugees as 'Illegal' has led to them being locked up off-shore for extended periods of time (6+ years in some cases).

Western media people fall into groupthink though. On the eve of the 2016 elections the liberal media were all certain that Hillary was going to take it, because all the liberal journalists only had liberal friends and they all hated Trump, so in their echo chamber, Trump was toast. On the reverse, in November 2012 Romney's loss came to a shock to his inner circle, because they were listening to their own echo chamber. Although to be honest, I don't remember now what Fox News was predicting in 2016.

We all have our biases, I wonder if journalists are so diligent to be thorough and re-evaluate things they assume to be X to make sure it's really X, but I doubt it.

I remember. I was in the US, in Mountain View, on election night for work. I went to get dinner as the election was being counted. Between that and the next day, there was just shock.

> we humans really need to figure out how to improve our ability to converge on models of reality closer to what really happens.

It's a good idea, but people with power and money have an agenda, and their agenda is often not in sync with current reality. They want their agenda to be future reality, and suppress current reality to get there. Just my opinion.

> The whole country premise is based on war.

Oh please. I'm all on board with criticizing the war, criticizing the human rights abuses, criticizing the megalomaniac Putin.

But once you go into this kind of criticism, you start the same propaganda you are criticizing Putin of. Make a difference between a corrupt regime and the country, the people. If you really want to make the point of the "whole country" being based on war, you need to be fair and do that to every country. The U.S.? Based on genocide of the natives, slavery and oppression of Africans and now playing world police bullying everybody who does not want to play along. China? Thousands of years of history of basing their power on war or the threat of it. British Empire? India?

Please, let's just not go there.

> Russians are being dragged into this against their will by Putin.

Unfortunately, this is profoundly incorrect. I know a lot of young(-ish) educated Russians, and at least 50% (by my estimate) kind of agree with Putin that "they were left no other choice".

Unfortunately more than that... see my comment above.

This is what propaganda will make. If you keep your population only speaking a language that the rest of the world does not use, it makes propaganda so much easier.

With enough determination (and it doesn't take that that much) you can make propaganda work just fine in any language. And that's they key part, it doesn't need to be perfect, just good enough. Look at Fox News or Alex Jones.

And even if you make the effort to evaluate both sides objectively, having too much information in any language doesn't work that great either. Most people aren't equipped to properly select their information sources, to parse everything and discriminate fact from feeling, propaganda from truthful reporting. To highlight how difficult it is, this happens at scale even in the most civilized of countries, with solid education systems, and freedom of speech and press.

Most people tend to choose sides which become core to their beliefs, and are reluctant to reconsider ever again. Once they picked a side it's "just" a matter of selecting the information that supports it. This is why the same person can read the same information and decide whether it's good or bad based on who did it rather than what was done? Some people read "country X bombed school in country Y" and purely depending on their "allegiance" will decide whether the school was full of terrorists or the bomb was launched by terrorists.

Whatever you do to change that will earn you the label of "other side's troll" (sometimes, ironically, from both sides) and you quickly learn that freedom of speech only works when you exercise it in your own bubble, thus reinforcing that bubble.

Yes, and the propaganda starts already before kindergarden and continues in school. And since the parents are already convinced by the propaganda, it's reinforced from there too.

true.

I hope it is not an argument againt freedom of speach?

I wonder what are your conclusion on how to tackle the problem? Because I ask myself this question regularly when I observe both sides arguing on the topic of free speach. But it’s very hard for me to be against free speach.

Education (and future to be invented tools) isn’t any magical stick, but the best I can think of for the long term.

possibly tools like: having feed filtering algorithms also implemented clients side. You’ll always be in some sort of bubble, but having more say in it (like many inventions have evolved). This of course creates new challenged, but that’s a natural thing

Propaganda works on both sides. Don't think the West and Ukraine tell's only the truth and don't think Russia tell's only the lie and vice versa.

Sure, there's propaganda on both sides. But it'd be lying if one was to say the amount and intensity of the propaganda was equal on both sides.

True, but that's propaganda against the reality.

There is one thing I do not understand and I was hoping you (or any other person who knows a lot of Russians) can explain: I hear that Russia and Ukraine have many personal connections from the past. I happen to be from the Czech Republic and I imagined that it is probably similar to our relation to Slovakia - we used to be one state, many people having friends or relatives in the other country, mutually intelligible languages, mixed marriages... I always assumed that personal ties are stronger than propaganda (if I know that my Slovak brother in law and all of his friends are not fascists, I would hardly believe the propaganda claiming that they are). My view was obviously incorrect, but how? Did I overestimate the connectedness between Russia and Ukraine? Or underestimate the influence of propaganda? Or something else?

Many Russians I know believe that Ukrainian forces have been attacking Russians living in Donetsk and Lugansk regions for the last 8 years.

And it's not completely a lie...

Haven't they killed thousands

8 millions to be precise

> I know a lot of young(-ish) educated Russians, and at least 50% (by my estimate) kind of agree with Putin that "they were left no other choice"

I grew up in South America. If you knew the kind of crap we are fed by our own very teachers that vilify american citizens as invading thieves without any care to make a distinction about the people and the government. I clearly remember during a certain heavy metal concert the keyboard player innocently tried to make a solo of the country national hymn followed by the american hymn and he was attacked by an angry mob of retards throwing things while literally chanting "Bin Laden". And yeah I was young and I thought "the yankee bastard had it coming".

I was in my 30s when I started realizing its all bullshit and the american people don't really have a say about the atrocities their government is causing in foreign lands. We've been fed with propaganda and programmed to hate people we don't know.

The regime and supporters are also Russians. If it was just Putin, there would be no war. A lone, old, crazy man would be hardly a threat to Ukraine.

When your country is attacking another country, asking for empathy is best done by relating what YOU are going through, personally, as opposed to telling stories for others.

I suppose that's somewhat metaphoric for the philosophical differences in how authoritarian rule manifests vs. whatever it is we call it in the West.

I have empathy for everyone in Russia who is going through hardship during this time.

This is surprisingly healthy view, you are probably (sorry for labeling you) not watching main stream media and get your news from more independent sources?

yes and no - I wasn't going for the empathy here.

silently losing your email address because you've missed one email in that rush sounds very very bad, esp if you're waiting for some important documents that can make or break your life/immigration/whatever.

Are you really honestly shocked? Has the news in Russia been completely opaque to the preparation to this invasion? It seems like everyone else has known about it for months.

They posted on HN. Means they must read it. HN was surfacing news about the buildup for months. They knew.

No, they did not. Nobody did actually expect invasion in Russia. Neither civilians, nor army. Putins orders came as a total surprise, he was not expected to cross the border. At worst everybody was thinking about new escalation in Donbas. The military buildup was considered a strategic negotiation game.

Meanwhile, here in the U.S., in the weeks leading up to the invasion, our Government was holding routine press conferences showing exactly where Russian forces were gathering and the threatening posture they comprised as they encircled Ukraine from three sides. Combine that with Putin’s and his foreign minister’s unrealistic demands, and the writing was on the wall. If the Russian people didn’t get the same information, that would certainly explain their surprise.

The same information was available in Russia, just different conclusions were made. Every political analyst focusing on Russian foreign policy is throwing away now years of their publications and research, because they based them on a wrong assumption (the one that Biden administration did not have - that Putin is rational).

My eastern relatives are all brainwashed by putin's pr. They only read news that come from their fb feed, and they all point to tacc/rt/sputnik/etc. I have already had so many arguments and now have asked them to not speak to me about it and just "inform themselves". They don't trust western media so I asked them to read Indian/Israeli/other neutral press

It's heart breaking to hear about people getting their lives turned upside down on both sides because a political elite on one side decided to forcefully take everyone on a horror-themed joy ride.

I see many stories of people mobilizing to help Ukrainian refugees however they can and those are great; I hope those of you getting caught in the chaos on the russian side can also find compassion from someone, in what I imagine is just the start of these coarse collateral-damage-prone punishment-minded moves (well intentioned as they may be).

It's hard for me to send my sympathies to you - my relatives are either hiding in bomb shelters, or fighting your countrymen in the east and in the south. They are all Russian speaking people who hate Russia and everything Russia stands for with passion these days. Anyway, please accept my sympathies, and find strength in yourself to do more.

Call on your government to end the war. Immediately. That seems much easier than working down your list, because it will grow longer with each day of this invasion.

I can't even call on my government to fix a pothole and this guy has to convince his dictator to let go?

I'm pro-siege, because I see Russian activists as collateral damage to stopping the machine, but it's not their individual fault they can't overthrow an authoritarian government.

It's not a government, it's a dictatorship, and if you protest or call it a war you can disappear in prison; I just read that Putin has a 15 years punishment in mind.

You might as well say "just assassinate Putin, it's much easier".

But agreed that figuring out something to do would be good

> It's not a government, it's a dictatorship,

Dictatorship is a form of government.

About two million people on the streets of Moscow should be enough for authorities to stop arresting people. Or how do you think Germany was reunited [1]? It is sickening to see people afraid of their government, the entity which exists to care for them and protect them. Economic sanctions hitting the small man might be the best chance you'll get to see that happening. The only question is how much military support the government really has, lucky for us the USSR was busy collapsing so that gave a window of opportunity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monday_demonstrations_in_East_...

It’s nearly impossible to organize a large scale protest in Russia. All the opposition leaders were jailed or murdered and even just posting info about protests is a criminal offence. There’s also a problem with many people being indoctrinated by the state propaganda, because independent mass media is banned.

There was an ECHR decision ordering Russia to free Navalny, but it was ignored by Russian government and Council of Europe did nothing about it.

If enough people call it a war, then then there won't be room to fill all the prisons. Putin can't put millions of people in prison. He also won't kill millions of his own people. OR maybe he will, but he'll do that anyway if he launches nukes like he has warned. Your life is already under threat, you really don't have a choice or any other options but to rid yourselves of this madman.

> He also won't kill millions of his own people. OR maybe he will,

One thing he can do, is to kill a few, give it lots of press, and it'll seem to people as if they'll get killed they too if they cause problems

under which rock did you live the last 20 years>?

The entire purpose of the sanctions is to make life difficult for Russians. Do you find this unfair? Then tell me the alternative. The West have tried appeasing Putin, but clearly he is not going to stop, ever. This very moment the Russians are closing in on Kyev, ready for the slaughter. While Russians are scrambling to save their money, Ukrainians are scrambling to save the lives of their loved ones. Should the West use weapons instead of economic sanctions? This would be third world war, probably the end of Russia but more likely the end of the world.

So tell us what we should do instead of sanctions?

The express claim was that "sanctions will not be targeted at everyday Russian people, only the oligarchs"

This shit isn't even targeted at the oligarchs, only Russian people

Surely nobody promised you that sanctions would not have any ill effects on the general population? There is no way to seize Putins war chest directly, so the purpose of the sanctions is to hit him and his power structure indirectly through the entire Russian economy and society. It is an extremely crude weapon and hits Putin critics just as hard as Putin supporters, and as always the weakest suffers the most. But what is the alternative? Doing nothing or just applying mild sanctions have been tried - it just embolded Russia and let to current murder of Ukraine. Do you have a better idea?

What you all need to do is depose Putin.

Yeah right. So atm I'm sitting in Kyiv centre, central traint station was bombed in the night. Babyn Yar, Holocause memorial was bombed yesterday - it was a try to destroy tv broadcasting tower. I'm so not fucking sorry for your shitty incovinience. I managed to get wife and kids out of country. And five more women with children to Poland. All of that under bombings. Go fuck yourself, I don't remember that ukrainians were given time.

When you're in a crisis situation, the last thing one needs is even more pressing things to get done. Especially ambiguous ones like writing some pleasant appeal to support, and hoping for understanding. And worrying that if support falls back to the large print policy, then having even less time to effect a transfer.

If you're serving the like of RT.com then redirect that to somewhere truthful yesterday, but turning the screws on individuals feeds right into Putin's censorship goals. At least consider moving your deadline back to something more graceful like 60 or even 30 days.

Wait aren't they obligated to do this under the new sanctions anyway? Same goes with any company that wants to continue doing business with US and EU, am I wrong?

I may be being overly paranoid here, but consider that being made an exception of by Namecheap might draw the wrong kind of attention from the regime.

It's a bit counter productive to shut down the people that is actually trying to help. Then there is only Putins views out there... That is exactly why the west did NOT shut down internet to russia, if we do that, there will be noone speaking against Putin.

> It's a bit counter productive to shut down the people that is actually trying to help

It has been said that exceptions can and will be made.

Though I suspect it might not be as easy as just asking because if it was everyone would just ask, so those needing an exception will at least need to take time to formulate an explanation, and wait for responses, etc.

Not ideal, but IMO understandable from namecheap's position.

Are you now going to ask for the voter record of each of your customers?

Or what is the appropriate anti-Putin a customer must have to be allowed to use your company's services?

I mean, honestly, if there wasn't moderation here I would be bluntly insulting you. I will definitely boycott you from now on. Both as a person and as a company.

This whole debacle is just proof that Namecheap will make hasty, marketing-based decisions based on the whim of the CEO.

It's no longer a reliable platform, or rather it never was.

You're hurting a lot of people who are using foreign services because they want to limit their exposure to Putin's regime.

The Russian state doesn't use Namecheap. Do you really think the negatives could be outweighed by some positive here?

This is NOT a "whim of the CEO" - 82% of Namecheap's employees live in Ukraine, 1700 people. And you're expecting them to support Russians? Think again.

I'm 100% supportive of Namecheap's actions in this.

Thank you for coming out like this and doing what you are doing, at the same time: this also isn't your fight, you are like those people hiding in the Ukraine subways hoping they'll be alive tomorrow morning: collateral damage on a stage set by a madman. I suspect that there are a lot of people right now wondering if continuing with Putin is worth it so please don't stop, you may be close to some kind of resolution.

We have over 1000 people on the ground there, mostly in Kharkiv. We have been working 24/7 to try to get them to safety. While I haven't experienced anywhere near the suffering they have. I haven't slept almost anything for days trying to help in every way possible to get them to safety. Don't make assumptions.

Thank you for doing this. My country borders Ukraine, and it's very encouraging news that someone in a position like yours is taking steps like that.

I think you answered in the wrong thread (which is very easy to do on HN).

I applaud your action, but I think you should give private individuals with registered domains the benefit of the doubt for now and concentrate on companies, also I think that the tax angle is weak. The dissonance to have your employees' lives at risk from the very same Russians that are looking to get some customer support is the main factor I think.

I must have a very confused model of what it takes to run a domain registry. I don't know what those 1000+ people were doing before Putin came knocking, but I'm glad you're looking out for them.

Customer service most likely.

see: https://www.namecheap.com/careers/ukraine/

(copy/paste from the page):

> Find easy inspiration on your way to the Ukraine offices each day, whether it’s the ornate architecture in Lviv, the vibrant student community in Kharkiv, or the many waterfront parks in Dnipro. Here you’ll join the central hub for our Product, Technology, and Customer Support teams, where we work closely with our longtime strategic partner, Zone3000.

It doesn't take 1000+ people to run a domain registry: it takes 1000+ people to run an easy to use, secure domain registry service.

Thank you for what you're doing. I was in the process of gradually moving my domains off of Namecheap as they neared expiration over the past few years.

I think they might come back to Namecheap as a result of this.

The regime in Russia is much more likely to topple if Russia is quickly isolated. It is painful to individuals there, but it's also the right thing to do.

Isolation has never helped but always made things worse. The way you state that making life painful for people is the right thing to do - is exactly Putin’s way of thinking.

It's the right thing to do if it contributes to either regime change, or to a deterioration of the nation's economy leading to a reduced ability to wage conventional war.

That sounds exactly like Putin's plan - change the EU regimes so they play nice with Russia and reduce the ability of Ukrainians to wage conventional war, it's btw the official version - demilitarisation of the Ukraine.

This is the real problem in the current situation - everybody is trying outplay each other by using different kind of force (military, economical) and nobody wants to sit down, listen to each other's concerns and try to develop some acceptable peaceful solution together.

This is a reactive plan, not an aggressive plan as Putin's apparently is. It is not the same.

After the events of the last few days, it would seem you are quite mistaken if you think the west as a whole is interested in "developing a peaceful solution together" with Russia. We are first and foremost extricating our economy entirely from Russia at least in the short to medium term. I think you fail to grasp that this is now being seen as an idealogical conflict, not a conventional rivalry between fundamentally like-minded foes. At least as long as the current Russian regime is in power.

We heard Putin's nonsense concerns - he accused Ukraine leadership of being literal Nazis. The President of Ukraine is Jewish and his family survived the holocaust. Putin has lied every step of the way. And you want us to sit down so he can tell more lies?

>"The regime in Russia is much more likely to topple if Russia is quickly isolated. It is painful to individuals there, but it's also the right thing to do."

I think it is absolutely the other way around. If you isolate regular Russians from the information and will not let them communicate with the rest of the world Putin will be the first to send you thank you card.

Look at all the international crying when China puts firewalls. Meanwhile you are advocating basically the same thing.

There’s no reasonable comparison. Namecheap isn’t blocking anything, they’re simply avoiding doing business in Russia or with Russians, and are willing to make exceptions.

They're free to do whatever the fuck they want. I just told what I think about it. We do not have to convince each other

Isolation hasn't helped in the case of North Korea, so I would not be surprised if it doesn't help in the case of Russia.

The threat that North Korea poses to the rest of the world has also been minimized partly as a result of its isolation (whether self-imposed or otherwise). To the extent that the Russian economy deteriorates through isolation, its reduced ability to wage conventional war is a benefit in and of itself.

Agreed, but North Korea's isolation hasn't helped topple the regime nor improve the lives of the people living there.

While probably true, the current goal is to help the people of Ukraine. Helping the Russian people may be a good goal once this job’s complete (although I’m not sure what the current overall Russian sentiment is toward the situation).

The dictator of North Korea is protected as a useful tool for China. Is Russia willing to submit to Chinese control if they have no other options?

Yeah it did help. They have a crippled economy.

That only made it harder for the people there to topple the regime or have better lives.

Or with Cuba. In fact, has it ever helped?

Each situation is different.

I wouldn't support 75 years of isolation in Russia, but a country in free fall might lead to regime change in the not-too-distant-future. I want Putin out. I can see scenarios by which he's out in weeks, months, or a few years.

Even more, I want Lukashenko out before Belarus is a nuclear power. Right now, we could affect regime change without nuclear consequences. That option leaves the table soon.

Off topic to this thread but we also have people in Kharkov. Anything you find in terms of what we can do practically that you can forward would be appreciated.

Thank you for everything you're doing.

> I'm not complaining. While I did try to fight against the regime since its beginning, I could've done more. We screwed this up, and we're responsible, and all the inconveniences we might have cannot be compared to the suffering of people of Ukraine. Just saying.

I'm so sorry you have to live under these conditions. You don't need to compare yourself to the suffering of the Ukrainian people. You're also in pain.

Have you thought about leaving? Can you and your family and friends easily emigrate?

I hope the best for you too.

"Have you thought about leaving? Can you and your family and friends easily emigrate?"

When you have real family and friend connection - you can never "easily emigrate". There is always a relative to a relative and a close friend with relatives, which adds up quickly and the bigger the group, the harder to move or find asylum at all. And which state would be willing to welcome russians, when there is so much talk again about collective punishment?

And how to get your assets out, when both the russian state as well as the western states are trying to block exactly this?

I doubt there is an "easy way" for ordinary people to get out.

Anti-Putin Russians leaving the country only plays into Putin's hands. It would be like a Stalinist purge without the bloodshed.

A giant brain drain of scientists, engineers, doctors, civil servants... would surely weaken Russia in the long term – even if Putin might celebrate it as a help to consolidating his power.

And even if it didn't result in a backlash that removes Putin from power, chipping away at Russia's economic, technology, and military/industrial strength still greatly reduces his ability to wage more wars of aggression in the future.

There were surveys years ago reporting that more than half of Russia's youth would like to emigrate. I doubt it is easy.

ETA: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-politics-emigratio...

Most of the EU countries has stopped issuing visas. We’re really stuck between two equally hostile political forces pursuing their interests.

No. Not "equally" hostile AT ALL

Here you can see how effective propaganda is. Even when the facts are there for all to see it still work to a degree that people will take those memes and spit them back out as their own.

>We’re really stuck between two equally hostile political forces pursuing their interests at any cost.

I know. It's awful. If we can't get Russia to stop attacking Ukraine with bombs, tanks, guns and missiles, perhaps we could convince the EU to stop bombing Ukraine? Oh, wait...

Or we can prevent ordinary Russians from leaving the country ruining their economy at the same time, pushing them into the civil war …

One of these things is not like the others.

Invading a country != denying visas to citizens of a country that's doing the invading.

Stay where you are and you may be murdered by an invading force != stay where you are and deal with the results of sanctions.

Both are definitely bad, but they are in no way equivalent.

As I have said in the comment below - for the ordinary Russian people which have nothing to do with the invasion the consequences are equally bad from the both sides.

such a claim is tantamount to saying ordinary Russian people are sociopaths who only value things in terms of how it affects them

I do not think that is the case

they're people, just like everyone else, and your ordinary person can obviously tell which of the two aforementioned scenarios is way, way, way worse than the other

"Equally hostile"? Seriously?

I can understand. You are comparing the situations in the both countries from the outside and situation in the Ukraine is much worse. But from the inside I have to face severe consequences from the both sides for what I haven't done, don't support and essentially have nothing to do with.

OK, I see what you mean.

What is severe about switching registrars for you?

I know the other sanctions are extremely painful for the Russian people, but I think of it like this: you are the victim of an economic war, and it is the alternative to a physical war, where you would be bombed to death.

I would say that both sides of the pain you're feeling (from NATO and from Russia) are both Putin's fault.

For my personal perspective, I do have empathy for you (genuinely), but I still wholeheartedly support the forced deterioration of your economy if it either contributes to regime change or reduces your country's ability to wage conventional war (and I believe at least one of those outcomes is a plausible consequence).

Deterioration of the economy usually leads to more war even more quickly. You can take Germany after the WWI as an example. Positive regime changes are only possible in the stable economical situation. Take me as an example - at the moment I do programming for a living. Let’s imagine I’m cut off of all the tools, customers and equipment. What would I do? I’ll probably have to work for the regime which will become the only source of the income, will get much smaller wage, work longer hours and have much less resources and influence to change the situation. We went through all this during the Soviet Union times. Such regimes benefit a lot from the isolation which allows them to turn people into slaves essentially. The idea that you can improve anything by harming people never works. Putin’s propaganda is using the same argument- they claim that they fight in the Ukraine to improve the situation in the region. I doubt you believe that.

If Russia were to be forced into an isolationist command economy as you describe I would surmise that, much like the Soviet Union, its influence and relative threat to the rest of the world would deteriorate over time, maybe leading to a similar internal collapse. For your and the world's sake I don't want that outcome, but I'd nonetheless take it over its current status as a relatively more robust economy helmed by an aggressive and violent expansionist.

Well if you want to get rid of the robust violent regimes that engage in war outside of their borders than you should start with the US. They have been involved in much more conflicts and killed much more civilian people all over the world than Russia.

So how do you recommend that the rest of the world support Ukraine's effort to not be swallowed up and pillaged by a neighboring country?

Direct military intervention is the only way to save Ukraine at this moment. Massive deployment of NATO troops near Lviv, no-fly zone etc. Given the inflow of refugees, EU can rightfully claim that the war is causing economic damage to it and intervene on humanitarian grounds. We are looking into Syrian scenario unfortunately.

Deterioration of the economy in times of peace favors war, but deterioration when war is already committed to is a valid tool to the aim of ending the war by destroying the ability to project force. This is not the same aim as sanctions in peacetime.

If you are fighting against the regime then this is only helping.

If enough people get inconvenienced that would normally not think twice, maybe there is a chance it will turn their heads to think for a second about what is happening around them.

Thank you for what you and your team are doing. OVD Info is very important project for Russian civil society and we shall not let you down.

Thank you and all the OVD Info for your work.

>And, you know, those people you want to point at their own government, they won't get it.

There are thousands of people 'getting it' being arrested on the streets of Moscow.

They are getting it not because some domain registrar decided to do whatever he wants.

Every detained person will not be able to keep their domain, while the ones not busy with activism have the time to transfer them.

I'm not even from Russia and I'll be busy transferring my domains as well because I don't want to find out in coming days that my government farted the wrong way and I have to bare the consequences (It's one of those countries that keep abstaining from anti Russian votes so who knows if it might be clubbed with Russia in the moral court of Namecheap).

Just to be clear, this is definitionally "deplatforming". Having "plenty of other choices" doesn't change that. There are always other choices.

BS no shoes, no shirt, no service. Ever heard about that? If we were a monopoly, fine, there are plenty of other services out there. Over 1000 registrars including several in Russia.

> Over 1000 registrars including several in Russia.

For now. That could well change though.

And why should that be Namecheap's problem, exactly?

It was just an observation, obviously that's not Namecheap's problem.

Refusing a service from the get go is different than pulling the rug out from your existing customers. Why not just stop new Russian domains and require people transfer their domains when they expire?

While I don't have an opinion about your decision to terminate service to Russia (I'm not Russian, I'm not a customer, and I can see how having such a heavy presence in Ukraine could influence the decision), a lot of your comments in this thread directed toward previous customers are very dismissive. I feel like you could have taken the high ground here simply by reining in your attitude.

Fine, I will move my domains this week, even though I'm not in Russia and I don't have affected TLDs.

You're punishing people for reasons they have zero control over. If you actually want to help, pick up a gun and go to Kiev.

This was a slogan used to discriminate against people in the hippy movement, interesting to see that you support it. And yeah, it was a slogan used for deplatforming so the user that you are responded to is correct, monopoly or not does not matter.

But yeah, waiting for you to stop services in the US. Going to move my domains as well (despite not living in Russia) and advocate to everyone who I know to do the same.

You know what? I was on the fence but the snark of "BS no shoes, no shirt, no service. Ever heard about that?" put me over the line. I'm done with Namecheap now.

I'm not making any judgement on your actions - I, like most decent humans, am deeply saddened by "premature" loss of human life and can only empathize with the situation you are put in, but your answer is a noop and makes no sense. Turning down a patron for a hamburger is quite different than forcing someone to move their business-critical infrastructure in a time of crisis.

A little free advice worth what you paid from a former CEO to a current: Now is the time for you to be a strong leader and show courage and respect to those around you. Make your hard decisions (!) but respect those challenging them, especially in a public forum with many of your customers (of which I am one). I'll stick with you though (for now?) because I know the pressure on leaders even aside from unprecedented times.

I'll be migrating my small account of about 15 domains away from Namecheap due to this. I have Russian friends that I respect and hate to see negative action taken against them due to the unfortunate and despicable actions of their government.

Thank you!

Perhaps this will cut down on the fraudulent domain names being used to impersonate real companies that invariably end up being hosted on Namecheap? Support has stopped answering my tickets even when I provide all the material requested in your abuse policy. Stop offering 30 day free domain registrations and 50% of the fraud domains would go away in 31 days. Really, please make it stop.

Look at European and US sanctions, they're way more clever about it:

- Aim of sanctions is to turn Russians against Putin.

- Obviously, you want to target those that don't already hate Putin (no point in preaching to the choir).

- Sanctions should be felt, but should also direct more anger at government than the entity doing sanctions.

- For example, sanctioning a hospital or stopping medical supplies into Russia would be a stupid sanction.

- Second, you want to focus them on people who have sway. Most sanctions are focused on the wealthy and influential Russians. Forbidding oligarchs from living luxury lives in Europe is a good one.

- Your Russian users are very unlikely to hold any sway over Putin, and I'd bet 95% of them already hate Putin (no need to convince them) -- it's a tech crowd.

- My guess is that the vast majority of Namecheap customer's are exactly the ones that will protest against Putin, or organize information campaigns against him. Removing their means of communication won't advance your objective.

- If EU/US would sanction Kasparov or Navalny that would be a 0 IQ move, it's just an extremely dumb thing. This is sort of along those lines.

(I'm not Russian btw, I live in another European country and not a customer)

By all means, promote the Ukraine point of view (I support them 100%). For example, put up links to the speech Zelenskyy did in Russian, aimed at the Russian people.

Ukraine themselves understand how to fight the information war. You treat your prisoners of war well, give them tea and let them call their parents. They'll tell their parents that Putin sent them on a murder campaign on a neighbor, and that they're lucky to be alive and treated well.

That's how you play the game.

They don't care about the impact or people, they just want to virtue signal.

> Look at European and US sanctions, they're way more clever about it:

No, we're way past this with things like leading semiconductor manufacturers stopping deliveries to any Russian entity. The goal has shifted to depriving Russia of resources needed to wage a war. Soon Russians will be so poor that their government will have their hands full keeping domestic dissent under control, and hopefully won't be able to wage foreign wars.

This is cancer treatment on a global scale. Unfortunately, it damages not only the tumor, but rest of the body as well, but there are no other options left.

I’m an American. My government is also prone to boneheaded invasions of other sovereign countries. Does this mean I should save myself the potential future hassle and find another provider too?

If companies banned Americans over the invasion of Iraq, I would have wholeheartedly supported it, especially if the majority of that company's employees were Iraqis.

Companies should have freedom to associate, and people can criticize them for it and/or switch to another service provider.

This is also why monopolies are such an underrated threat to society. They give too much power to a single, unelected person. Namecheap is in a crowded space, so I'm not worried about it in this case.

> but ultimately even those tax dollars they may generate go to the regime

So you're essentially saying is that it would be better if Russian civilians suffer poverty, where do you even draw the line with this reasoning?

The logical line would be non combatants dying avoidable deaths. For example if Russia were so impoverished that people were starving to death we should try to feed them. It is indeed absolutely OK economically punish a country in order to inspire them to vote against leaders who are murdering their neighbors.

Vote against leaders? Do you understand how autocracy works? The elections are rigged and to be allowed to even participate you need to be compliant with the regime. How about punishing Council of Europe so they would enforce their own decision to free Navalny, so we can vote for him?

I know you're getting a ton of negative reactions here, which is always what happens when a protest or sanction inconveniences someone.

I just wanted to voice that I think this is a moral decision and though I am happy with my current registrar, I am going to consider switching to Namecheap, or at least using you guys next time I register a new domain.

> which is always what happens when a protest or sanction inconveniences someone

Not at all. It’s this particular message and phrasing that rubs me entirely the wrong way.

As well as all the people here that claim Russians should have done more to stop this.

I love Russian people and culture - to the point that I even learned how to read Cyrillic (which I've unfortunately had a lot of practice at in the last few days). So I don't want to see Russians get hurt, but think about it this way: What would you want Germans to do in the 1930s? What if they said "it rubs me the wrong way when people say I should do more to stop the NSDAP"? I sympathize, but when you're a piece of a system that threatens the entire world, it rings a little hollow to say "what am I supposed to do?". I can't believe the people that captured the largest landmass on the planet under their control are really all that helpless. Russian Serfdom was abolished in the 1800s. So if you, or a 1930s German is asking "what am I supposed to do?" the answer is "everything".

And I'll jump in front of the "But the U.S. is bad, too. Why don't you stop what you're doing and overthrow the U.S.?": You can't point to anything since the bombing of Dresden/Nagasaki where the U.S. military was intentionally inflicting mass civilian casualties with advanced weaponry the way Russia is in Ukraine right now. Not Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, etc. 0 land annexed since WW2, 0 threats against our neighbors, even though we have the most powerful military on earth. Even under Trump: 0 wars started, despite his belligerence. And Dresden/Nagasaki happened under duress. Ukraine posed no threat to Russia in any way, shape or form.

“Everything” is not an answer, it’s refusing to think of an answer. Please, try to actually think about what can a Russian person do to overthrow the government.

Oh, and let me give you some prerequisites:

1. You can’t use mass media to spread your message. Independent mass media are banned. There’re some leftover newspapers like Meduza and Novaya, but they’re niche and can be easily banned too.

2. Firearms are banned and it’s expensive to acquire one illegally. While rich person probably could arm, like, 10 people, it’s impossible to raise an army without massive funding.

3. You can’t rely on international organizations. When Navalny was jailed, Council of Europe had done precisely nothing to enforce ECHR decision to free him.

4. You can’t have visible leaders of opposition, because they would be murdered (like Nemtsov), jailed (like Navalny) or forced to leave the country (like Sobol).

5. 2% of the country population is serving in some kind of armed forces or law enforcement. They’re well paid, receive huge benefits and are ready to detain, torture and kill protestors. There’s a National Guard (340k people) which specifically exists for that purpose.

6. Elections are not working. They’re rigged, and opposition forces are banned from participating in them anyway. Every big party publicly supports war.

7. Mass protests on the scale of 100-200k don’t achieve anything. We don’t know if bigger protests would have any effect, but given [1] and [4] it’s unclear how to organize them. Protesting is illegal. Mass protests usefulness to influence the public opinion is limited, because media consistently underreports amount of people present.

Given that set of constraints: what would you do? I’m actually interested in your reply. If you think you would do better if you were Russian, what that “better” is?

Honestly, I don't exactly know. But I do know the same was true for most of these people, so I might start there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Germans_who_resisted_N...

I know that seems glib, but it's not. Unlike a lot of others in the West, I recognize and feel how cruel it is that when the world is in these situations it always seems to be the Russian commoners who we ask to make the biggest sacrifices. I recognized this even when I was a kid in U.S. school being taught the "narrative" of U.S. sailing across the oceans to make huge sacrifices to save the world... I know the West owes Russia a lot, and that's not something we like to talk about because it makes us uncomfortable. I ascribe to the theory that since the end of the Renaissance, "how good things are in the world at large" is tightly correlated with "how good things are for Russian serfs/commoners" and one of the most efficient ways to achieve the former is to improve the latter. So I'm not entirely callous to how hard it is and in the end I want Russia and her people to prosper....

But: We're in a crap situation right now and Russia put us here. Russia is a nation of people and those people can't enjoy the privileges of the Global Economy and Technological Revolutions while the nation they constitute tries to burn that world down. That's a tough pill to swallow.. we tend to get used to the things around us and treat them as "owed to us": The internet, thriving economies, banks... but it's not. You can lose it all, and so can the entire world.

So here we are in Stalingrad again. I'm sorry we put you here, disarmed in front of a maniac's henchmen cutting their way through innocent people's lives. I'll admit: I didn't do enough to pay attention to Navalny... we had our own mission and our own madman we had to stop. But here we are playing Shostakovich again and asking Russians to charge into the rubble and attack the enemies of civilization again with their whatever rocks or weapons they can pick up along the way.

So I'm not going to ask you to do anything, I guess. If you want to sit and rock back and forth with your head in your hands because it seems hopeless, I can't blame you. I don't know that I would be capable of doing anything different in your situation, to be perfectly honest.

но я не русский

Yes, and there’re groups that resists Putin’s government in Russia, and it doesn’t stop Putin any more than White Rose stopped Hitler.

And while we’re fighting an uphill war, world does everything to help Putin.

World buys Russian oil and gas, so Putin has money.

World don’t enforce international treaties, so Putin can jail anyone even if ECHR said no.

And now world stop selling goods and services to Russians, so

1. Money stays in Russia

2. Putin gets to claim “the West hates you” in propaganda and it sounds very plausible

3. The opposition has additional problems, so less time to do something useful

Isolation helps tyranicall regimes, not hinders them! NameCheap (and now many more companies) are literally helping Putin to stay in power. Taking resources from Russian people doesn’t “motivate us to revolt”, it takes resources to revolt from us.

You are doing really dumb and hateful thing. The people that will be affected by this are usually the same who sponsor or even are the opposition. They were fighting Putin long before the war started and long before you started caring about it. It’s the same as to stop selling paper to members of White Rose resistance group [1], because they were Germans. A clear signal that risking your freedom or life does not worth it, because the world hates you no matter what you do. Russian people will pay very high price without your involvement: by not being humane, you just show them that Putin was right and West is against them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose

> Putin was right and West is against them.

Counter point: Look at West Germany and Japan after WWII. The West changed tack pretty quickly after the war ended. The West wasn’t against the people, they were against the ruling parties and the infrastructure/policies that supported it.

If it’s possible to punish an authoritarian aggressor without harming the citizens, I’d love to hear ideas. But in Germany and Japan, the average citizen paid a huge price for getting caught up on the wrong side of the war and I’m not sure how much differently it could have been done without countering the unprovoked aggression of both nations of which other country’s citizens paid a huge price.

Might as well drop a nuke or two then? Extreme actions have a proven track record, after all. It would certainly cause the government to reconsider, civilian casualties be damned.

I guess the sarcasm wasn't clear enough. Too late to edit now.

> The West wasn’t against the people, they were against the ruling parties and the infrastructure/policies that supported it.

Ah yea if we exclude things like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Ameri... . If you’d like some ideas how about you don’t repeat mistakes like this once again. All you’re doing is strengthening putins demagoguery

After WWII members of White Rose were dead.

It is necessary to put sanctions against the entire country, but there’s a reason why foreign policy is executed by government, not by individuals.

The difference between WW2 and post Soviet Russia was the Marshall Plan- where the US pumped incredible amounts of money to build up the post-war economies of Europe and Japan. The same didn't happen post Soviet collapse Russia, in fact, I'd venture to say Russia was treated more like post- WW1 Germany- forced to assume all Soviet debt, a collapsed economy and social structure, with predictable results (the rise of Putin).

If this situation ends up with the collapse of the Putin regime, I hope that the West doesn't repeat the mistakes of the 90s and actually comes with real help to create a strong, confident, freer Russia.

> Putin was right and West is against them

If having to transfer a domain sends someone scurrying to Putin, they were far from innocent to start with.

Thank you. I haven't used Namecheap in the past, but I will consider it in the future. I hope more western companies that care about the rule of law follow suit.

As a long time Namecheap user, I support your decision.

To everyone complaining, have you first tried to contact support and explained your situation? It's clear that Namecheap will talk to you to understand your situation and help where it can. It's also one of the reasons why I switched to them many years back. Not every company hides behind their nameless, automated robots.

> To everyone complaining, have you first tried to contact support and explained your situation?

Spending hours writing emails back and forth in my non-native language is not exactly my top priority at the moment, as you may guess because of recent events.

The email is very clear: I have to move regardless of my views or opinions, or else. ToS is very standard as well: service may be interrupted at any moment with no guarantees, all discussion is to happen in US courts.

I see no basis for a support ticket.

Besides, would you really want to stay after something like this?

Maybe as an individual I could see supporting them, but as someone who works in the corporate world and actually needs to rely on services like this, I wouldn’t risk doing business with a company that might change their TOS at the drop of a hat because of the political views of their CEO or some geopolitical event.

"at the drop of a hat" - I think you mean "at the drop of a bomb"

> I wouldn’t risk doing business with a company that might change their TOS at the drop of a hat because of the political views of their CEO or some geopolitical event.

So, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Delta Airlines or any of the other myriad of businesses, large and small, that have taken action affecting business partners or customers without or in advance of government mandates? Well, I mean, good for you that you will restrict your business to such a small pool of suppliers/partners, but good luck competing with those that don't.

> because of the political views of their CEO or some geopolitical event

Outside of the unprovoked war, there are a few very novel things going on: Putin threatening a nuclear 1st strike, EU banning Russian aircraft and naval vessels, disconnecting Russia from SWIFT, major companies divesting their Russian assets, Russia banning foreign current withdrawals, Germany massively boosting their defense funds, EU nations openly donating weapons to fight the Russian invasion, Russian stock market refusing to open, Russia banned from the World Cup and other sporting events, etc.

There are some major, major world events happening. It’s gonna get a little bumpy.

This announcement seems like one of the least surprising or least world-changing events of the last 96 hours.

And with all of the sanctions against the financial connections to Russia, it seems like there will probably be lots of complications in even doing business with Russians. Purely from a business standpoint I can understand cutting off the market if you think they're unlikely to be able to pay easily, and then the idea that a predominantly Ukrainian company would be expected to put up with this is ridiculous.

Children getting targeted by cruise missiles is not a "hat dropping". My work depends, in no small part, on _not_ living in a world where that happens as a matter of course. My respect for this company just increased substantially.

So completely agreed.

And my outrage is also in sync with yours as long as we are talking about children in the white little backyard of Europe. Other places? Other war crimes? For that we’ll outrage on Reddit. Join us.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

Here you go, you find yours https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque or head to “Ad hominem” if you’d need a longer list to pick from.

>because of the political views of their CEO or some geopolitical event

If America were at this moment dropping paratroopers into Canadian cities and trying to hunt down the Canadian government, and 70% of the Namecheap workforce lived in Canada, would you still consider that just a 'political view' on 'some geopolitical event' or something more consequential and relevant to the company?

Seems like not a great time for their chat support to be down for maintenance.

Incidentally I am in the process of transferring a domain to namecheap today.

I support your stance on this.

Speaking as a Namecheap customer for several years now.

Why do you support this dump decision as it doesn’t help fighting the regime?

I just learnt in hard way that I am blamed for being Russian citizen(by ethnicity I’m not Russian), even if I live, work, pay all taxes in the UK?

How it’s different from nazis blaming Jewish for being Jewish?

I think Namecheap discriminates based on the address, so if you live in the UK you can update it. Not easier for the rest of us.

This is disgusting. You are punishing innocent people for the decisions of their government. Do you even realize that your behavior does not help your own cause? Do you realize that innocent Russian people banned from your platform will be encouraged to further hate the United States and support their government's war effort?

So, you are trying to make Russian people’s life even worse nevertheless you understand that they have nothing to do with the situation? How are you better than Russian government?

He’s not murdering people?

I'm not murdering people too.

The question was “how is he better than the Russian government”. Not, “How is he better than me”.

Are you following a law or just arbitrarily and unilaterally deciding to do this? I am not Russian myself but I expect a domain name provider to be extremely neutral, unopinionated, and stable. Namecheap is showing to be neither so it can’t be trusted for important domains.

> tax dollars

First of all, tax rubles.

Second of all, tax rubles of your customers are negligible compared to oil money. The basic scheme of Russia is that the guards are paid the first cut of oil money. Removing even more options from the general population, and reducing their contact with the West, just makes them weaker compared to the guards. Thanks.

How do you get off punishing normal people for the supposed crimes of their government? Are you going to go back and retroactively ban U.S. users for the many war crimes various regimes have committed over the years? Are you from the U.S.? Maybe you should just resign -- no point in you having a "platform" as an executive when your government has committed such atrocities around the world.

I have been a (US, before you accuse me of being Russian like you have done elsewhere in the thread) Namecheap customer for years, and have urged at least a dozen others to use your service. I won't be doing that in the future, your responses in this thread have killed any trust and goodwill I had for your service.

I find this action from Namecheap really lazy virtue signalling and your justifications to be hypocritical, for reasons pointed out elsewhere in this thread.

If you were really interested in attempting to do the right thing, you would ban on a case-by-case basis, or donate a percentage of your profits to the Red Cross in Ukraine or something. There's no justification for this heavy-handed nonsense.

I'll do my best to stay away from your company.

Someone should make a list of websites and services that ban users based on ethnicity/nationality. I for one, will stay away from services like namecheap (I am neither Russian nor Ukranian), simply because this doesn't help anyone, but will be used as justification by the pro-Putin guys.

I'm curious what it's going to look like 40-60 years from now then the US finally fractures.

All the Americans in here who think this could never be our problem are 100% wrong.

Just reading an interesting SF novel (Ken Macleod's Beyond the Hallowed Sky) where one of the geopolitical plot points is that America has returned to democracy (although still having a substantial crazy demographic).

Oh, that looks interesting. Space operas aren't normally my thing, but I'm a sucker for multiple POVs/story threads.

(I'm just on HN for the book recs. I'm using you all. Sorry.)

As somebody who works in politics, I'd say that everywhere has a substantial crazy demographic and one of the fundamental problems any governing system has to address is what to do with them. (And of course, that's assuming they can all agree on which demo are the crazy ones...)

75% of their company is based in Ukraine.

Russian forces are literally bombing their offices in Kharkiv. How is it "virtue signaling" to say you're not happy to sell your services to the country trying to kill you?

this whole thread and people's responses disgust me, people saying they're virtue signaling, and that it's "bad business practice" to cut off services like that. They're in a warzone and this is what people are upset about?!

Namecheap has just ruined its reputation. Giving almost no time for domain transfer is insane. I will avoid using your services at any cost.

> I cannot with good conscience continue to support the Russian regime in any way, shape or form. People that are getting angry need to point that at the cause, their own government

I understand you have a lot of employees in Ukraine and you have to show support. Your heart is in the right place. I empathize and would try to do the same if I was in your shoes. But you didn't do a good job here, unfortunately.

When gitlab had to make a similar move [0] at least they had a good excuse — security of their customers' data.

Your message does not make any excuses like that. You straight up equate being russian / living in russia / whatever it is with supporting the war. You fell victim to the same primitive xenophobic thinking you're claiming to condemn.

This is a bad decision. Being a CEO is a tough job, but I think you could do better. I wish you luck.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21437334

> I understand you have a lot of employees in Ukraine and you have to show support. Your heart is in the right place. I empathize and would try to do the same if I was in your shoes.

For additional context to readers, according to LinkedIn 834 of 1,137 employees (73.35%) are located in Ukraine.

https://www.linkedin.com/company/namecheap-inc/people/

>Your message does not make any excuses like that. You straight up equate being russian / living in russia / whatever it is with supporting the war. You fell victim to the same primitive xenophobic thinking you're claiming to condemn.

From parent:

>I sympathize with people that are not pro regime but ultimately even those tax dollars they may generate go to the regime.

I don't support the Russian invasion, I'm not Russian, and all the other caveats that put me on the "right" side of this.

All that to say I am cancelling my Namecheap account and in the future will actively recommend alternatives to your services. Not only is what you're doing completely ineffective, it is likely doing more harm than good to decent people.

Absolutely. This sort of virtue signalling should be frowned upon. I have over a 100 domains in namecheap which is a drop in a bucket I'm sure for them but I'll be moving them to porkbun.

Same.

Thank you for your support!

Thank you for your position and for your support!

GoDaddy's CEO ought to send you a fruit basket or something, you just made salesmen of the year!

Why are you giving an unrealistic deadline to transfer the domains away until the 6th if domain transfers take 5-7 days. Will you stop the transfers in the process when the 6th of March comes?

Why not just block renewals and new registrations? Do you have to pay taxes to Russia on .ru registrations at other times?

I guess it's just hate and discrimination of Slavs. Wouldn't believe his lies.

you're providing 5 days to change registrars and 0 days to change hosts to people who are currently waiting in line for hours at banks to attempt to access their own funds.

I'm a US citizen, so roughly half of my gross income goes to support US war crimes. It seems like I should move off of Namecheap now to avoid disruption to my service in the event that you ever grow a spine.

> I'm a US citizen, so roughly half of my gross income goes to support US war crimes

That's unlikely, cf. https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/where-do-our-fe....

Not Russian (I'm from Argentina), but I'll move all of my domains right away. This is absolutely nuts. I do not care about this war at all, but more importantly, I won't be keeping my domains in a registrar that arbitrarily cuts down on customers from being from a particular country.

How anyone would support this is beyond me. New world order virtue signalling at it fullest.

> I do not care about this war at all

This war has a non-zero chance of becoming a nuclear war that ends all human life on Earth. If you don't care about it, you must not care about anything at all, including your own life.

There aren't that many people who would boycott a business that decides to stop offering services in Russia and there are even fewer who can watch Ukrainian bodies pile up without emotion, so I'm pretty sure Namecheap doesn't mind losing customers like you.

> I do not care about this war at all

You said everything you had to. Wow.

> I do not care about this war at all

ok. that's your problem.

That's the point. It's not my problem ;)

well, you moved all the domains, you were triggered enough. it's your problem.

With Namecheap? Absolutely, I won't trust them with my domains ever again. Today is X reason, tomorrow is Y.

I am from neither country but I’m going to move my secondary domain away from namecheap. What you’re doing is not only immature and unfair, it’s simply absurd and stupid. You’re coming across as an edgy and impatient person trying to score some desperate goodwill brownie points.

And you know I know for sure it’s immature and stupid? The way you’ve been responding in this thread. “Okay maybe we will extend”, “maybe lenient if we see it’s needed”. Ffs! Looks like someone at namecheap has gone bonkers.

Hey @NamecheapCEO, Ukrainian here. Thanks a lot!

Please notice, there needs to be some sort of verification mechanism. The russians have already figured out that simply setting "Ukraine" in profile data a) works b) might suffice to bypass the upcoming restriction.

Donating all income from Russian users to the Ukrainian war efforts or refugee relief efforts would have seemed like a much more satisfying (and effective!) way to go about this.

This is the path my company has chosen.

I genuinely hope this is a joke, REALLY....

Why don’t you cut off United States citizens while you are at it? The regime that has probably done more damage and caused more instability to the world than any other country. The U.S. uses the entire world as their playground couping any Government that disagrees with them or refuses to bend to their demands and bombing their citizens and civilians. What about the atrocities and war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan? Syria? Libya? Yemen? Etc.

Just because it is covered up or whitewashed by the media in the U.S. does not mean it is not happening.

Blaming the citizens of a country for the actions of their Government is absolutely atrocious behavior. I used to have all my domains on Namecheap. I have since moved them, but now I will make sure I never use your service ever again and will never recommend you to anyone else either.

Also the argument that tax money is supporting the regime is ridiculous. If citizens could CHOOSE how their tax money was spent it would be one thing, but in the U.S. our tax money has literally gone to providing weapons and training to terrorist organizations.

Again, this doesn’t EXCUSE the actions of the Russian government, but taking their people hostage to use as leverage is disgusting and despicable.

Please kindly check your whataboutism at the door. It's not HN-caliber discussion.

OP's comment is not whataboutism. It's simply pointing out that this is not the principled stand it is masquerading as. If this action was strictly about countries waging unprovoked wars heavily laden with war crimes, the US would be on the chopping block from NC's perspective. That we were not (nor ever will be) is a testament to the fact that the US is too lucrative a market for them to lose and that this is not principled whatsoever.

Attacking a position solely because it is inconsistent is the definition of whataboutism. (And perfect consistency is the enemy of improving short-term outcomes.)

"A propaganda technique where criticisms are deflected by raising corresponding criticisms of the opposite side."[0]

OP is not deflecting criticisms of Russia, OP is pointing out that the claim that NC is taking a principled stance is blatantly false. Obviously NC can still choose to proceed since they believe that this is a net benefit, but they cannot claim it is a principled stance.

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/whataboutism

> And perfect consistency is the enemy of improving short-term outcomes.

Sure, I can agree with that point. But everyone can agree that pointing out inconsistency is definitionally not whataboutism.

Whether you call it whataboutism or something else, my point remains: it is still a cheap argument anyone can throw out that isn't HN-caliber.

Calling repeatedly for violent revolution isn't HN-caliber certainly but that hasn't stopped you from doing it all over this thread. <- This is whataboutism by the way.

Sorry, what was the point of this?

Sorry, that was a bit rude and pointless. I apologize. I am just frustrated that your comments all over this thread are suggesting that people should take up arms and violently overthrow their governments in Venezuela and Russia, but you are here policing good-taste commenting on HN.

I don't really know how to address the meat of your point, in that I think OP's point is a perfectly legitimate one and you don't, and I think it is unlikely that I would ever be able to convince you (and you will certainly never be able to convince me).

No, crying out "whataboutism" is precisely what is wrong with our discourse ATM. We are simply unprincipled or contradictory in huge swathes of our daily lives and especially when it comes to these "large" issues. And it is an especially important element in a site like HN with many technical and (rule or process) orientated people. You have to peel back the layers, and the GP comment is spot on in that it spawns a discussion along the lines of "why is this one different?" If we figure out that difference and the collective news and opinion's community apparent double-standard (or not) then we have a good place to allow us to move forward.

Address it, don't dismiss it.

Nobody’s perfect; everyone is a hypocrite to some degree. And we have more pressing matters to address right now, such as Russia invading Ukraine. If a company wants to stop doing business in a country that’s doing wrong, we should support that. If that same company (or a different one) wants to boycott the U.S., they’re welcome to do that, too. People have their reasons for doing things and they’re not always consistent, because life is complex and nuanced, actions must be prioritized, and choices often involve weighing different trade-offs.

You and others use "whataboutism" like it's some sort of checkmate. The point is, many Americans are very eager to police everyone based on their "principles", everyone else except themselves and their allies that is.

The topic of discussion is not whether or not the Russian invasion of Ukraine is bad. If it was, your argument would be applicable.

This topic is analogous to "selective enforcement" from police. If a policeman typically jails blacks but gives whites a warning for the same crime, this is bad, and should be acknowledged as such. Same here.

You're comparing a civil-rights violation to a business inconvenience. Namecheap and others like them owe nobody anything except by contract, and they're going to refund (to the extent possible) those they won't do business with anymore.

It's hypocrisy nonetheless, regardless of the scale

Pointing out hypocrisy is a cheap shot, though, because everyone's a hypocrite to one degree or another. As I've said elsewhere, pointing out hypocrisy usually gets you nowhere in an argument. It's seen by many as a vain attempt to show how smart you are and is generally just a distraction, as opposed to a participation in a substantive discussion of the issue at hand.

Maybe that's how you feel, but not me. I try to live in a principled way, and I think many other people do as well. So I support calling out hypocrisy because I think it makes the world a better place (I would like my own views also challenged on these grounds). In this case, the hypocritical action is needlessly divisive because it paints Russians as "the other", and I don't think this type of thinking helps the world in the long-term.

>"It's not HN-caliber"

Are you suggesting that the hypocrisy is?

Whataboutism usually follows some kind of hypocrisy.

The act of pointing out whataboutism are usually done so the hypocritical side can take refuge and refute any discussion. This often happen because hypocrisy is real - otherwise it would be easy to refute the equivalence instead.

As I've said elsewhere, pointing out hypocrisy usually gets you nowhere in an argument. It's seen by many as a vain attempt to show how smart you are, as opposed to participating in a substantive discussion of the issue at hand.

> As I've said elsewhere, pointing out hypocrisy usually gets you nowhere in an argument.

It does sometimes gets you somewhere. Hypocrisy implies the (often moral) concern over the accusation is not a genuine one, that the accusers are merely criticising to advance their agenda. If an agenda is involved, then whatever the accuser says should be taken with some grain of salt.

Pointing out hypocrisy destroys the argument & the discussion as a whole, because it reveals that the other person is arguing in bad faith.

In case of Namecheap: it’s 100% complete bullshit when they say they hate war & invasions, and people are calling them out on that. Instead, they should say “we prefer when US invades, because we hate Russia” which would be much closer to the truth.

Maybe, just maybe, the two things you might think are alike, in fact are only superficially so.

Maybe, just maybe, the two things you might think are only superficially alike, bear a much deeper resemblance.

See how two can play at this absolutely pointless game of offering pithy remarks without any argument behind them?

Indeed. Usually people who lazily point out hypocrisy instead of making substantive arguments haven’t spent a modicum of effort to find and consider distinguishing characteristics that would make them think twice before posting. That’s what makes whataboutism so frustrating in what is supposed to be an intellectual forum. And it’s an attractive nuisance, so it leads to long threads such as this one.

Ah, yes. "What about whataboutism!?"

Calling out whataboutism is just a way to avoid explaining your inconsistent views. Often times people who call out whataboutism haven't really thought out their position.

No, I’m calling it out because it cheapens our discourse. We can, and should, have more substantive conversations here.

So instead of saying “whataboutism” you can tell us why it’s okay to be hypocritical, or why the situation is sufficiently different.

Making statements that are hypocritical cheapens discourse, and we can and should have more substantive conversations here.

You’re putting the burden of the work on the wrong party. It’s the lazy hypocrite hunter who needs to focus that energy making substantive arguments instead.

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

I think the world has changed in the past twenty years, and I think if the U.S. engages in future foreign wars, maybe they will have to suffer similar consequences from non U.S. companies. I hope so, and I say that as a U.S. citizen.

I for one like this. If you are a shitty citizen in our increasing global world, one positive benefit of globalization is the many ways that that global world can now bite you in the ass.

There is no excuse for wars of aggression. And in the past people would throw their hands up and say "well what can I do?" Well we are all connected now, so increasingly there is something you can do.

The world is not changing and the next US invasion will also have zero consequences and lot of justification to placate the sense of morality of the population.

> The world is not changing

You may have blinked and missed it, but it just did. The US has weaponized global finance to an unprecedented level. Russian loans denominated in FX will all default. The stock market is cratering as soon as they are brave enough to open it back up. The ruble is going to be worth less than it was an hour ago. The Great Russian Experiment is underway.

Everything will be back to normal in 4-8 years after a cease fire, though. So sanctions just hurt the most vulnerable of a 150m people country. Congratulations. That will surely prevent future wars like seen with the treaty of Versailles...

I don't think a cease fire will return things to they way they were. Lots of countries have had it with Komrade Putin and will work to see him deposed. Maybe an oligarch or general will help speed up the process?

I'm guessing they don't cut off the United States because the United States isn't invading and bombing the cities where they operate and have employees.

A lot of people are making assumptions about this being a purely PR "woke" move of some kind, ignoring this: https://www.namecheap.com/careers/ukraine

Seems pretty personal to me. If I or my people were actively being bombed by an invading force, I'd take it personally, too. And then I'd take action about it.

To me, Russian behaviour is identical to the Turkish invasion of 1974, the subsequent occupation of Northern Cyprus until this very day, and the installation of a puppet government.

I sympathise with Namecheap's CEO, and had I been anything more than a grad student, I'd have done similar.

> Why don’t you cut off United States citizens while you are at it?

Just because they don't cut off the American government, especially Texas, from services, doesn't mean that they can't stand against Russia. This is a blatant false dichotomy. In addition, I 100% blame every tax-payer of Texas for the human rights violations going on there, even those who would call themselves liberals.

Vote with your wallets. Leave.

When the day comes when US tanks cross over into Canada to annex it under a false pretext, running over passenger vehicles; when the US tells its soldiers they are going on a military exercise only to have them shoot at their neighbor; when the US tells the world "if you get involved we'll nuke you"; when the US jails its anti-war protestors for as much as carrying a sign... then perhaps your comparison will be valid. Until then you're just deflecting.

When you already mentioned false pretexes - how's going on with finding WMD in Iraq? Any seccess yet?

Is shooting at neighbor worse than shooting at people half over the world (or they don't count because of wrong skin color)?

It's becoming increasingly apparent that the only thing that matters at all is power. Sadly, the USA is responsible for establishing this paradigm, although pointing this out is taboo whataboutism. Now, we're returning to a world as it's always been: apes compelling other apes with their sticks.

Could you clarify ‘paradigm’ in context?

sure, I mean the paradigm of using military force, and more generally disregarding international law to achieve geopolitical goals

The morality of any military action, can and has been endlessly debated (as it should) because it's non-binary, it's a spectrum. That does not change the fact that these two superpowers could not be further apart in how they go about spreading their influence around the world.

Through oversimplification you can argue that anything is the same as its opposite.

There is a reason that when given a choice, nearly all European countries chose NATO over Russia.

We don't have to build a wall to keep our people in. Or our allies for that matter.

WMDs or not, Saddam Hussein's Iraq did not in any way resemble Canada or Ukraine.

The problem with this kind of whatabboutism is that the US invades places run by morally reprehensible people. To keep the comparison with Ukraine going, you've either got to convince us that Saddam Hussein was a nice guy, or Zelenskyy is a butcher. Everyone knows that's bullshit.

Just because a place doesn't resemble Canada or Ukraine or people who look and act like your version of civilized society doesn't give the US a right to wage war resulting in large numbers of civilians being displaced or killed.

What's happening in Ukraine is reprehensible - but the result of US policy blunders in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, numerous South American countries and the like has been more damaging for the world we live in IMO.

While this isn't an apples to apples comparison, maybe you've got to convince us that the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, etc. are better off after US involvement. From my perspective, the answer is an obvious 'no'. Even under Saddam Hussein (who was a dictator and evil person - I'm in agreement there) the people of Iraq, who lived under some repression in their daily lives, were better off than before the US invasion.

Afghanistan (by supporting Bin Laden and his organization) attacked the US first. Kick sleeping dogs, get bit.

In Iraq, about a third of the population (the Kurds) are unequivocally better off. About a third (he Shias) are arguable. The Sunnis, no, but they were the ones beating up the others. The final history hasn't been written yet (and it could get worse, no question). Still, the story is incompetence rather than malevolence. Marching in and killing Hussein is easily defensible on moral grounds. The chaos after is not.

Blunders in Latin America have to be taken on a case-by-case basis. Mostly they involved supporting one side or another in an existing civil war. The worst excesses predate WW2.

Nobody claims that the US has an angelic past, but comparison to Putin's Russia is not apt.

I wrote a long response to this but I don't think it's worth debating these points further as we probably see and experience the world differently.

> The problem with this kind of whatabboutism is that the US invades places run by morally reprehensible people.

So a Mexican invasion when Trump was President would have been okay? Only if rest of the World knew...

That happened only in your wild imagination. Despite Trump, the US and Mexico enjoy exceptionally good relations, second only to our neighbor to the north.

I see.

For all the problems with the US's actions in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (not to mention the run-up to them and their aftermaths), there's an enormous gulf between that and any equivalency to Russia invading Ukraine.

Iraq was a nation that had invaded and annexed a neighboring country, a scorched earth retreat, committed domestic human rights abuses, had attempted to acquire various WMDs in the recent past, and had perpetrated chemical weapon attacks. Afghanistan was knowingly sheltering a group that repeatedly targeted and killed Americans worldwide, culminating in the deadliest attack on civilians in world history.

Again, that's not to say war was the best option on the table, nor no blood on the hands of the US in the end... but not a single one of these justifications for war applies to Russia invading Ukraine.

As another commenter said, the morality of military force is a spectrum of grays, not black and white – but just because criticism can be found in every case doesn't mean every one is equally unjustified or amoral.

> Why don’t you cut off United States citizens while you are at it? The regime that has probably done more damage and caused more instability to the world than any other country.

Is this true? My understanding was that (despite the current conflict), the world has been experiencing a rather unique period of relative peace under US hegemony compared to the past. This is obviously true when looking at timescales since the late 19th/early 20th centuries [https://oneearthfuture.org/opinion-insights/world-getting-mo...]. Clearly the world has been significantly less violent since WW2, which is the time that the US became a superpower.

Datapoints on prior eras are significantly less robust, but the US wasn't a leader at those points anyway. We do know that wars were widespread and brutal, despite having much less advanced weaponry, and we know that life expectancies are far longer today than in the past.

> Again, this doesn’t EXCUSE the actions of the Russian government, but taking their people hostage to use as leverage is disgusting and despicable.

This is how economic sanctions work. What's the alternative? Do nothing? Economic sanctions place pressure on the politicians in the aggressive nation to stop their aggression. The alternatives are to do nothing (morally unfathomable) or to fight them (in which case Russians will die, and if Putin's threats are believed, maybe we all die).

I find it concerning and perplexing that so many hackers are seemingly more concerned about Russia's economy than Ukrainian lives. Every day the conflict goes on, Ukrainians die (and if you're so concerned about economy - their economy is getting destroyed too!). Logically, anything that moves us towards ending the conflict peacefully and quickly reduces lives lost and will spare all involved from further economic retribution.

Additionally, this is personal for Namecheap. Imagine being bombed by a country and having strangers tell you that you have to keep providing services to members the country that is killing your friends, family, or even you! You must continue serving the country that is bombing your home! It is truly absurd.

Hello. Really sorry to hear but I understand your decision. Please let me know if my case is eligible. I've have Ukrainian but frankly the Russian passport holder. I've have not been living in Russia for over 4 years, I'm not a resident or tax payer.The 37 year-like situation in Russia was one of the reasons of immigration and all the domains are not even closely related to Russia.I'm currently in another country in the process of obtaining a citizenship. Already changed all the details including the phone to my new address. Will you please whitelist me?

When a citizen becomes _passport holder_.

All of my Russian friends are decent people who are just trying to get by. They have been suffering under Putin’s regime for many years, as well as international sanctions that have plagued their livelihoods.

Many left Russia years ago but they are still being persecuted because of where they were born.

Segregation is not the answer.

Pathetic.

I've been setting up infrastructure to do blockade running over the obviously coming great Russian firewall for the last few days and made a mistake of relying on your service. I did expect payment troubles. I did not expect you to help the Kremlin in isolating the Russian populace from uncensored news and communication platforms beyond its reach. Right now my grandparents are going to have greater problem finding news about the war from any other source beyond Putin-controlled bullshit faucets, and so will I. It's likely also the case for antiwar protesters.

Isolating Russian users from foreign internet services is literally the Kremlin's dream, something it could not achieve for a long time even with all the power amassed over the years. It's revolting to see Namecheap and others doing Putin's job for him, while claiming to stand up against his war crimes. And spare me the "tax dollar" spiel. The overwhelming revenue going towards the war comes from oil and gas exports (even more so with the currency crisis), something that is explicitly not being sanctioned - less the Western tech executives are inconvenienced.

If you're going to harm people because of their country of birth to feel better about yourself - say it straight. What you're doing right now will not help a single Ukrainian, and will make Putin more resilient, not less.

The Namecheap CEO said his company employs 1000 Ukrainians.

It's almost certainly the case that they face mass resignations and walkouts if they don't cut off Russia. I think I would trust the Ukrainian employees of Namecheap to know better than a random individual on the internet what is in the best interest of those employees and their community.

> Isolating Russian users from foreign internet services is literally the Kremlin's dream

That's 100% the Kremlin's doing. USA and Europe are effectively already at war with Russia and it will only escalate up from there.

I couldn't agree more. Virtue signalling never helps.

Is it still virtue signaling when your 1700 Ukrainian employees are currently getting bombed?

Seems like a bit of a stretch to claim such with so much of their workforce having their life and liveyhoods directly impacted by the Russian invasion.

If a cupcake shop in California stopped serving Russian customers I'd agree with you, but this situation feels just a tiny bit different wouldn't you say.

Just thinking out loud about this...

I am a business owner that sells services worldwide. We've just checked and found that a non-trivial number of our customers are registered in Russia. I don't feel comfortable with our company receiving their money.

I am appalled and horrified by the invasion and I wish to make this right some how. I just don't know what to do here as the leader. I've had relationships with some of these clients for years, and I know them to be good people. (Others, not so much - they will be easy to lose.)

The other thing is - and I'm ashamed to say this - I have a lot of fear about being drawn into the spotlight by publicly removing customers in the way that you have. We are a well-known data provider in our industry with clients all over the world, and I personally rely on this business for my livelihood. As I said, I feel ashamed and guilty about this, but I just don't feel brave enough to take a stand like you have. That said, I do want to set this right.

So I wonder what can be done?

- We can close the website to new visitors from Russia, and prevent new paying registrations, as an immediate first step.

- We can make a donation to the defence and rebuilding of Ukraine, covering the entire amount of revenue we received from Russian companies in the past year.

- We can contact paying clients located in Russia, informing them that their service is being terminated at our discretion, as we are no longer able to serve clients in Russia. We'll have to check our T&Cs for termination as there may be a 30 day cooldown, but we can certainly immediately stop their payments.

I know this isn't even a half-measure and I feel terrible about that. I'm just too afraid of having a target upon me or my company right now. I will just do what I can because it feels right.

I think that the best idea, depending on what services you provide (since that matters in terms of tactics and communication), would be to take the money and donate it all to the Ukrainian war efforts (Option 2). Make an announcement to that effect, but a very, very low key one.

That way any Russians doing business with you that do support Putin will pull their money (or you take their money and give it to their enemies, preventing them from using those resources elsewhere), while Russians who do not support Putin will keep using your service. By making the announcement low-key enough/missable, you give Russians opposed to Putin a plausible out. "Oh, sorry, the sanctions/West took out my net for a while and I didn't see that they were dirty traitors, my bad." It might at least buy someone one extra chance/time to communicate.

If 80% of international companies throw out their Russian customers, then the Kremlin has to look fewer places to find where their domestic opposition is hiding things or talking. If I want to know what kind of credit card someone has, there are only a few options. If I want to know where someone bought a certain candy bar? That's a lot harder.

Just saw this, thanks for your comment.

i’ve been a namecheap customer for a long time (10+ years). i do not think you are making the right choice. you are punishing the wrong people. you are sending a message that selecting namecheap isn’t just choosing a hosting platform but also a making political alignments. you say you’re doing this because you want nothing to do with the war, but by making this change you are involving yourself even more with the war

Before I respond to you about domain names, is there anything we can do to help your team's families get out? Do you have a fund? Are there refugee organizations you're in contact with?

------

> If more grace time is necessary for some to move, we will provide it.

Why not 14 or 30 days? I've moved domains before (many years ago) and I think it took > 10 days depending on lots of factors, complications, and even had to cut support tickets, etc.. So I'd hate to see an innocent Russian freelancer get punished by this, if they missed your notification and had to move in a hurry.

> There are plenty of other choices out there when it comes to infrastructure services so this isn't "deplatforming".

Come on, you are clearly harassing them pointlessly. And you are doing that over something they don't have much of a choice about.

> We have people on the ground in Ukraine being bombarded now non stop.

That is sad and abhorrent, but this kind of moral posturing and superficial puritanism is both ineffective and hypocritical. I am pretty sure you are aware that some of your own tax dollars also go towards bombing people.

I will not register any domains with you guys in the future.

> People that are getting angry need to point that at the cause, their own government.

This is correct, but your actions are going to silence (or at least muffle or interrupt) these people's voices. Don't double down on it because you're riding some righteousness high. You still have time to backpedal and not act like a vain fool.

The tax dollars you are talking about are pennies to the oligarchs. You are only hitting regular people with this selfishness. It's a pathetic gesture, and I'll never use your services.

This is gross. People aren't their governments, did you cancel US domain registrations when the US government invaded Iraq?

This feels kind of shallow. Much like the BLM support thing, where they would attach a slogan to their website. "Let's get some social points" is what this amounts to.

I think businesses need to stay out of politics and social issues. You're, in effect, punishing people who have nothing to do with what the Russian government chose to do.

its called virtue signalling. and it is indeed very shallow. this is going to cost them a handful of customers (that will be individually inconvenienced), but they'll get to launder/profit off this move of putting their foot down towards evil Putin. "That will teach him who's who!"

So you're totally cool with the AZOV Battalion, right? They're the heroes? You're definitely OK with not doing this to Ukraine?

It is deplatforming. And I’ll be transferring my domains elsewhere. US Citizen.

I get you are upset over what is happening, but this is just not the way to do it, nor promotes free speech.

I have few domains with you and will be moving. If you don't understand what services your company provides and who are your clients ie. that these can be varied people and businesses and how these sweeping measures can affect them, then I don't want tomorrow to end up without domain because I had idea for domain that ended with ru, or ly (Libya) or some other smaller country domain that ended up on media shit list.

In other news, it is really easy to transfer domains, it just cost a little bit.

Those in Russia and in that region might be a problem with blocked credit cards and such.

Thanks for the heads up, I did not know Namecheap had such terrible politics. No, I do not support Russia.

I transferred my three domains to Cloudflare. Cheers.

You're so quick. Yet people here complain it takes too long... figures. You're also betting on not having to transfer again soon, it seems.

> You're so quick. Yet people here complain it takes too long

It probably helps that they’re not in a country that’s currently facing sanctions thus able to quickly make financial transactions that will support the transfer of their domain. I could be wrong though.

I'm in the US, and my websites are a hobby. It could take any amount of time if I updated my address before transferring (don't do this, you are locked out for 60 days!) or if Namecheap made me wait five days, which seems within their right.

The internet is not supposed to choose sides or abandon people so thoughtlessly. I'm lucky it doesn't matter much in my case and wanted to make a statement.

I don't support much of what every government does. I actively oppose my own government where I can (not Russian though). Holding the serfs responsible is absolutely immoral. Further, your employees and investors can be hurt (not sure they will in this case).

I will ensure myself and no one I know will ever use your service.

I want nothing to do with a company who punishes people arbitrary.

It's almost seven years since Saudi Arabia started the war against Yemen [1] They are still attacking Yemen and they commit atrocities.

Could you please consider a Saudi Arabia Service Termination?

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian%E2%80%93led_inte...

It really sucks that you'd do this.

You could have spared us the affronting lack of tact in purporting to be both litigant and judge in an ongoing conflict, the infantile role-playing as a war tribunal, and the omission of your conflict of interest in your diatribe (part of your staff is Ukrainian).

Your dismissal of technical and non-technical complexities involved in moving over domains in such a time frame, brushing off of forged business relationships, have prompted me to end all business with you. You are not a serious provider. I am not Russia-based, and I'm moving elsewhere.

How are the Namecheap services taxed in Russia ?

What if you were to charge $0.00 to existing Russian customers for their existing services ? Would there still be a tax levied on services ?

> We have people on the ground in Ukraine being bombarded now non stop. I cannot with good conscience continue to support the Russian regime in any way, shape or form.

What about the American regime currently bombing Somalia?

Or the Saudi regime currently bombing Yemen?

Or the Israeli regime currently bombing Syria?

Or the ... regime currently bombing ...? You get the point, surely.

Why the selective enforcement against just this one particular regime?

They also fail to acknowledge the thousands deaths on both sides since 2014 until today, since the coup and introduction of Maidan snipers to kill the innocent. To name a concrete example, you can freely consult the magnitude of the casualties related to the Donbas-related conflict alone (some 13,000-14,000 lives since April 2014). Part of the staff is Ukrainian...they ought to know.

Why today? Perhaps the answer lies in the field of sociology or psychology.

As pointed out by others before me, this mainly pushes affected customers to transfer domains to Russia-based providers, increasing their profits (a little) and sphere of control (a little more).

...But it makes them feel better?

Namecheap employs 834 Ukrainians, about 73% of their total workforce. The families of their employees are probably dying. Ukraine and Russia are in a state of war.

It's irrelevant what previously occurred by other governments.

Did they hire them because salary is much less expansive than in the US?

I don't know the answer to that question, but does that no longer make them human and the leader of the organization of which they are employed should not be emphatic to their situation?

> It's irrelevant what previously occurred by other governments.

All of the bombardments I mentioned happened on the same exact days as the bombardments in Ukraine. And how you can dismiss the killing of people in other countries as 'irrelevant' is astonishing.

That statement and answer was specific to:

> Why the selective enforcement against just this one particular regime?

Providing the plausible reason why there was selective enforcement for that one particular regime, and thus the irrelevancy of what previously occurred by other governments.

Your next, perhaps still valid question, is why they aren't continuing to apply this policy to your other cited circumstances.

The people you list aren't white enough for westerners to care. That's what it is, that's all there is to it.

I'm considering moving my domains to protest this decision.

You are attacking the wrong group of people. Being against Putin doesn't mean being against the Russian people. What happens is you hurt more innocent people.

You are jumping in a bandwagon because it feels good. This isn't a responsible logical action that doesn't achieve anything but hurts the wrong group who you would think we would want on our side.

There's a lot of criticism going your way for this, but I support your decision. This ventures down the path of "what difference does it make if I'm the only one making a stand." Apathy is the downfall of the collective.

So be the one who stands alone, because I guarantee that the vast majority of people pointing fingers aren't doing a single damned thing, apart from being an armchair warrior.

Do Israel next. The tax dollars support Apartheid and war crimes.

What a trashy move, seriously.

>I cannot with good conscience continue to support the Russian regime in any way

So apparently now, when you contract a service, you should know that it could be terminated abruptly whenever one of its founders has some sort of trascendental realization. Did you have to call Denpok Singh to ponder that out?

Just want to voice support for what you’re doing. Just today there was an excellent article on Politico [1] explaining that one critical component of the world’s response to Russia must be for Western corporations to cease all business with Russia. That income is what has enabled Russia to build up enough of a war chest to do this. You guys are ahead of the curve.

[1]:https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/28/world-war-...

Dont you think that people that choose abroad registrar, choosed it not for low price (which is actually not low at all)? Dont you think that they have some other specific motivation "to be abroad"?

Will you also block countries that use their tax dollars to arrest and kill LGBT people? Or countries that are involved in other unjust wars?

It's fine if you do, but this wording reads like cringy bandwagoning. I highly doubt you won't immediately revert all this and try courting those customers again if this war gets resolved but Putin somehow stays in power. Just go with a "sorry dudes but your president is doing bad stuff and we're making a temporary move here. Sorry" sort of statement.

> committing war crimes against innocent people

does not sound like a right reason for your actions. Because with this, there are a bunch of other countries you should be suspending your services for. US, Israel, India off the top my head and you might want to include some Arabic countries to the list.

> people on the ground in Ukraine being bombarded

makes your reasons legitimate though as you probably don't have people in other countries as victims of war crimes.

As a namecheap customer (or addict to registering names for things I may do in the future.... ) I appreciate this, and appreciate the flexibility for those with special circumstances. While this is a headache for innocent Russian bystanders caught up in this war, the response by the majority of the world needs to be overwhelming.

Selective collective punishment is a really bad way to treat customers.

Russians are out in the streets protesting and even Russian oligarchs are speaking out. Apparently that doesn't mean anything to Namecheap though, they're all guilty. This is really a PR move, nothing more.

As others have highlighted, providing services to any American supports war crimes, if we go by their logic. No one should be doing anything like this unless they are trying to comply with sanctions. Which, as far as I know, are only currently targeting senior Russian officials. Even then, sanctions tend to hurt everyday people more than the regimes they're trying to target. Does anyone really think that people in an authoritarian country can control what their leader does? This is the same mindset that lead to the Japanese internment camps in WWII, just a difference in degree.

Even though I've been a happy Namecheap customer for years and have recommended them to others, this is extremely troubling and I'm going to look at migrating my own domains from Namecheap. Bonus points for being too cowardly to advertise this on your site.

I'm with you. I hope more companies follow this.

Yes, Russians will suffer.

Yes some of them tried to change things and paid dearly for that. I'm sorry for them.

But up until a week ago vast majority didn't care. Majority of Russians supported (and still support) annexation of Crimea. Well guess what, it's time to pay.

> Majority of Russians supported (and still support) annexation of Crimea

Nope. Don't trust russian propaganda. Even many of originally brainwashed "vatniks" have not been buying this shit for some years.

> But up until a week ago vast majority didn't care

Those who "care" tend to find "novichok" on their underwear. Terrible choice, no excuses, no nothing but fear of being repressed for a tweet. Me and my family will now pay for this fear with even more fear: of being impoverished, being outcasts, being locked behind the new iron curtain etc on top of even more repression.

I'm not looking for sympathy, nor want to ask for forgiveness for the orders I didn't give. Be safe my friends, even if you consider me an enemy

Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq Again, Yemen, Vietnam, Bolivia. The list goes on. If you will not support Russia's imperialism, how will your conscience hold against US Imperialism?

Didn't a big migration to the Namecheap service occur a decade ago because GoDaddy unilaterally suspended a domain without recourse?

There is a lot of talk of innocent people. Yes they are. But this is war. As Kharkiv is getting plastered by Uragan as we speak, to break down the territorial defence units and creating a lot of collateral. So killing businesses and destroying livelihood of Russia will help in the long term war.

This is not going to get resolved any time soon I do not think. As much damage as can be done to Russia now should be done.

“Free speech is one thing but…”

That is despicable, assuming you are an American citizen.

Also how do you know you aren’t terminating some pro freedom sites, anyway? You disgust me.

You're mistaken if you think they are pro-free speech.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/25/21194417/namecheap-corona...

My point exactly.

>There are plenty of other choices out there when it comes to infrastructure services so this isn't "deplatforming".

Yes it is. On the small scale, you are removing them from your platform. On the larger scale, if every registrar were to follow your example, users would be cut off at a deep level from free access to the internet.

What happens to domains that aren't moved by the deadline?

If only we Americans had to face the brunt of our invasions and destruction of so many countries in the middle East and other places. Maybe one day we will.

This is wrong. While I support all of the sanctions against Russia on a national level, individual companies should not be able to make such decisions based simply on politics.

I agree with you politically in this case. But that's just a pure coincidence. Next time, we might be on opposite sides of politics. When I select a registrar, I don't want to have to take into account the arbitrary politics of the management, because they won't always agree with me. Even inside your company, the next CEO, or the previous CEO, or your co-workers, will always not agree with your political views.

Besides, you can see that your approach often harms the wrong people. One guy in the comments below is a Russian who has been working to oppose Putin's regime for years, and now you're actually hurting his work in Russia. You responded by allowing exceptions to your policy. Are you ready to review tens of thousands of applications for exceptions on a case by case basis?

This is a dangerous precedent and you should be better than this.

Are you guys doing the same to US users due to their country's many war crimes?

Why freeze what's free?

As someone involved in internet infrastructure I find this particularly upsetting. We should be seeking to connect people even in the worst places to shine light on the problems, not cut them off from the world.

Russia is a petrostate all of Europe is supporting the Russian side financially.

Are you going to ban all European citizens because of the actions of their government?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-24/european-...

I am not Russian. But this kind of blanket banning prompts me to migrate away as well.

If I am going to do this, I will at least go through all the heavily used domains, and address your notices to those pro-war website owners.

Isolation and hate will be the end of humanity. Love is our only hope.

You are absolutely doing the right thing! Ignore the hate here. People in the comfortable tech world have trouble with uncomfortable truths, and Russians right now are facing a harsh uncomfortable truth: citizens are collectively responsible for their leaders.

I’ll pray for your employees and for you. Namecheap deserves its potent reputation, and this tiny momentary backlash blip will fade almost instantly.

Your conscious will be clear forever. Слава Україні!

As much as any other sane person, I don't support any kind of war or invasion, but this is knee jerk reaction from your side and you are punishing wrong customers, which is not going to bode well with them. Your customers are civilians, what do they have to do with these wars? I'm thanking myself now that I have already moved my domains to CF. I don't want to be held accountable for any nonsense things that my Gov/leaders got themselves into.

I became a political activist back in college. I participated in almost all anti-government demonstrations since 2010. I volunteered for Alexey Navalny's mayor campaign in 2013 and his presidential campaign in 2018. I donated money to his Anti-Corruption Foundation which investigated and exposed crimes committed by the senior Russian government officials, including Medvedev and Putin himself. Now this foundation is proclaimed as a "terrorist organization" and because of that, according to a new law I'm currently prohibited from participating in any kind of elections for the next 3 years. I was beaten up by the police and arrested multiple times. I had high ranked police officers showing up at my door asking me to testify in court against Navalny and making vague threats to me after I refused to do that. Just this Saturday I was detained again for participating in the anti-war demonstration and yet I still continue to go to the streets of Moscow every evening doing just the same. And now from your email I found out that apparently all that time I was an accomplice to Putin's regime!

Please allow me to paint you a bigger picture. Putin didn't become a cruel crazy dictator just a week ago. He has always been like that and there is a reason why I joined the opposition movement more than 12 years ago. He was killing people, rigging elections, and stealing an enormous amount of money for himself and his friends through all these years. And through all these years no one cared about this except for the Russian opposition and people like me. He rigged the elections for his party and then made the police forces to brutally beat up the protesters and yet Russia still was a member of the G8 and all European leaders were meeting with him and treating him as an equal. He was destroying all independent media in the country and there were no sanctions nor protests overseas over that. The anchor on the state-owned TV-network was calling Ukraine "not a real state" long before the annexation of Crimea and yet that anchor was enjoying his villa in Italy. The state prosecutor of Russia was fabricating charges against opposition leaders while having an active residence permit in the Czech Republic and a penthouse in Prague. Even after the annexation of Crimea there were zero repercussions for Putin's oligarchs that own a ridiculous amount of real estate in London. In fact the entire world watched how the football club Chelsea was crowned champions. The club that is owned by Abramovich, one of the main Putin's cronies.

Through all these years there was zero help that the Russian opposition were able to get from any European government. There was no support from people of European countries. There were no protests in London after Nemtsov was murdered. There were no demonstrations in Berlin after Navalny was arrested. No people in Paris asked their government to not recognize the results of clearly rigged elections in Russia. And now after all those years the organized opposition movement in Russia is simply destroyed. Almost none of the independent media exist anymore. Nemtsov is dead, Navalny is in prison, Kasparov, Volkov, Sobol and many others had to flee the country. So why don't you want to punish the people from European countries that allowed this to happen? Why don't you terminate services with French citizens who didn't care, who didn't pressure their government to do anything about Putin through all those years and didn't elect anyone who was able to stand up to him? They're to blame for this war just as much as most of the Russian citizens and certainly more than I am.

I had a chance to emigrate from Russia into the US. I was working for a fin-tech startup from New York and they were asking me to move there. And the reason why I didn't do that is because I was inspired by Navalny and his stance that we shouldn't be afraid and we shouldn't just give up and leave the country to Putin and his friends. So I stayed because I didn't want to feel like a coward in emigration and I continued to do everything I could to fight the current regime in Russia. And now instead of providing any kind of support you're punishing me for this. I would really like to understand why do you think that I should be punished by you for this war. What did you do to prevent it that I didn't? Can I ask you what exactly did I do wrong and what specifically are you blaming me for? Was it wrong of me to simply be born in Russia? Is this something that I should've avoided somehow in your opinion? Or was it wrong of me not to run away when I had a chance and stay here to continue being in opposition to Putin?

> There were no protests in London after Nemtsov was murdered.

Yes there were; it was outside the Russian embassy.

Having said that; I totally agree with your post and its one of the best I've read on this subject. It makes no sense to further isolate Russians. Any consumer of gas or electricity in most of Europe is part of this; as we are all financially supporting Putin, and even with these sanctions will continue to do so.

Has America been held accountable for Hiroshima? Have you personally been held accountable for that attack? I don't think so.

Good for you.

You may think that there is an absolute answer to this situation, but there isn't. I recommend that you study commentators and scholars such as: John Mearsheimer, Zbigniew Brezinski, George Friedman, Peter Zeihan, Noam Chomsky, Peter Hitchens, Gonzalo Lira, Tim Marshall, Robert D Kaplan, etc., etc. to gain some insight into the other and more complex side of this story.

I am a proud American -- but, I am convinced that my country started this entire episode and planned to have it be so for a long, long time. 9/11, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, etc. just got in their way. Instead of drawing a rational meet-me-in-the-middle red-line with Russia (ex: Poland and the Baltics) that we could live with, we decided to take Ukraine for this ride. We did that. We encouraged Zelensky to talk about acquiring nukes, grabbing Crimea back, grabbing Luhansk and Donestk, joining NATO and the EU, etc. -- instead of encouraging Austria-like neutrality, we promoted our-way-or-the-highway.

And now what are we doing? Fighting to the last Ukrainian? Fighting until they lose even more in a country that has lost ~20% of its population from its peak? We are literally sacrificing their country and encouraging suicide. This. is. just. wrong!

You should be more informed. You go on about the Russian regime but you know nothing of what your own govt does.

For example, I know the British Govt has greenlighted it for British Military personnel (SAS/SBS/Para's/etc) to resign their commission and go fight in Ukraine.

If they come back their commission will be restored as if nothing happened. Its legal and its been going on for decades.

So I would ask the question, what has backed Putin into a corner and then you might start opening your eyes. Is the NATO expansion the real reason for all this?

Maybe you should double or triple the prices for Russian clients and send extra to Ukrainian charities or the army. As a Russian customer, I would be sympathetic to this and would be happy to support Ukraine in this way.

You should resign.

What is the purpose of isolating the abuse victim from the rest of the world?

Actions like these benefit Putin more than to harm him. If the Russian people are isolated from the rest of the world they'll be less likely do to anything about their oppressive regime.

A lot of Russian residents have a relatives in Ukraine. In this terrifying moment you've just added one more headache for them.

Oh great. Can I put on a star on which "RUSSIAN" will be written in large? So that a white master could immediately identify a second-class person? Did I understand you correctly?

While I agree that we need to put sanctions against bad actors, I see that many of the actions being carried out are either media influenced or could be percieved as PR stunts. Namely, are you asking the same from the people in Saudi Arabia, Israel, and US? Because at the very same time, these countries are bombing other countries and killing the civilians there. We should act the same to all bad actors, not just select few.

So far the global sanctions regime has been carefully constructed against the Russian state and specific companies and people supporting it. This is the first time I've seen someone targeting blanket sanctions at the Russian people - it may help your conscience but I'm not sure it helps those in Ukraine - presumably the Russian regime isn't a customer of Namecheap? Sanctioning citizens helps boost the governments case that the US/Nato/world is conspiring against Russia.

Just thank you so much!

I hope everyone leaves your service. Since the US did the same last year would you remove all US based domains? yeah. i thought so.

> People that are getting angry need to point that at the cause, their own government.

This is absurd in general, and more absurd in a pseudo-democracy where elections are rigged and the man in charge listens to no-one.

I understand from the thread that NameCheap has staff in Ukraine that are currently fighting for their lives. This is extremely tough for everyone involved.

But punishing Russian individuals who are on the good side of this fight is a knee-jerk reaction. It doesn't make sense and does more harm than good.

China, USA, Israel, Saudi are they next?

You might want to consider terminating for Belarus too now that they are invading Ukraine as well.

I've been happily using Namecheap for years. Now you really impressed me.

Without thinking about crimes of other countries a techninacal question, if you have registered the domain "mail.ru", will you convert it into "mail.com"?

Just wondering...

You are a private company and you can do whatever you want as long as your country's law allows you to do so.

That being said:

- Did you block US citizens from using Namecheap when the US invaded other countries and killed civilians?

- Did you block the US from using Namecheap when the US left Afghanistan without evacuating the people there who are in constant danger of being murdered by the Taliban?

- Did you block Ukrainians when they stripped minorities of their basic human rights? There are minorities in Ukraine like the Hungarian minority that has nothing to do with this whole conflict and they were denied their right to use their language by the Ukrainians that you have labelled innocent.

- Did you consider blocking Ukraine for their sexist and fascist move to deny their own men the right to flee the country?

Please, don't be part of the problem, if you want to support innocent people: support charities and tell your politicians to pressure Ukraine into allowing any person to flee the country who does not feel like dying because of this foolish proxy war between the US and Russia.

With your actions you are just weakening the neutrality of the internet and doing nothing to weaken Putin, his oligarchs will just move to a different registrar.

The US is not the one fighting this war, please stop using whataboutism. Plenty of people condemned USA's and UK's invasion of the middle east (including their own citizens), countries stepped in to help and support the invaded countries fight back (including Russia) - just like we're seeing here from Ukraine's allies.

> The US is not the one fighting this war

I wrote 'foolish proxy war between the US and Russia', the whole point of a proxy war is that one does not fight it directly, otherwise it would be just: war.

> please stop using whataboutism

Calling out hypocrisy is not whataboutism.

> Plenty of people condemned USA's and UK's invasion of the middle east (including their own citizens)

Compared to what we are seeing now: nobody has condemned the USA. I don't recall the US being hard hit by sanctions for all the countries it has wrecked for no good reason.

> countries stepped in to help and support the invaded countries fight back (including Russia) - just like we're seeing here from Ukraine's allies

I never implied that it didn't happen in the middle east as well. Please stop straw-manning me.

"There are plenty of other choices out there when it comes to infrastructure services so this isn't "deplatforming"" - Deplatforming does not mean that there aren't any other choices.

Are you planning to ban USA for all of the wars that it is engaged in or is this a racist and hypocritical move?

Wouldn't I still pay Russia if I move to a different registrar? That makes no sense...

I cannot move my freshly registered domain. I guess the reason is described here https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/name-holder-faqs-2017-... : "Your registrar may deny a transfer request if the domain name is within 60 days of initial registration"

So you are asking me to leave but not letting me go.

i will never use your service again

Why you didn't you ban NATO countries when they destroyed Libya?

First of all, I don't question you right to do what you are decided to do. And I wish all of your staff members and their families & friends to be safe. But I do have a question:

Did you, as some commenters say, decided to terminate services based on nationality rather than place of residency? If so, then it looks like a poorly planned decision. Overwhelming majority of Russians living abroad are against the war and Putin. In fact, many have left Russia because of its president.

Good to know namecheap isn't a reliable business partner.

Will be moving over my stuff, and adding it to the blacklist

Disclaimer: I'm a namecheap customer who is not impacted

I am pro-ukraine and have donated and I'm helping in other ways. However, I could not disagree with this decision more. The Russian people need support now more than ever. If it's mandatory because of sanctions, then that's that.

Otherwise this is alienating the people inside Russia that are most likely to help, the educated, globally connected tech and business people. They read western papers and are the ones being locked up for protesting.

I've had multiple discussions over the last few days with people inside Russia that are appalled. They're acting, and organizing, but that takes time.

It's easy to coast along and not stick your head up, and they're realising they can't do that any more.

Rather than cutting people off, use your customer list in Russia to spread the word. Link to the attrocities.

If we all really want to go that next step, it's gas to Europe (which is still effectively excluded from the sanctions).

I won't comment on the move you made, but I wish all your Ukrainian employees good luck! I'm in the same boat, I've got 6 people (mostly in Lviv though, one in Mykolaiv) there and it really feels shit that you can't do anything at the moment besides being supportive.

Now I know namecheap and I are not having anymore business in the future. Your move is just useless and is punishing the wrong people. You play in the hands of the hate towards Russian people. Do you even understand the history of Ukraine and Russia, or sis you just watch fake news about Russians commiting fake war crimes and decided to commit the huge mistake of punishing an entire population for a war moved by few?

Thanks for clarifying why not to use your service

As a US based customer I will move away from you. You are potentially shutting down voices in Russia. Maybe an anti-putin blogger will just give up blogging because of this. You are destroying what remains of the free internet of the 90s.

And just to make it clear, I 100% agree with sanctions against Russia such as even shutting down things like Google Pay. Your action here is just dumb and not well thought.

This regime will fall. If not now, then in a few years. What you're accomplishing with deplatforming people is making them ensure they do not rely on western services, which in the long run has the detrimental effect of lowering cooperation and increasing segregation. Plus, none of the taxes paid right now go to the war effort, it will take months for any taxes collected today to go fund the military, by which point this war would have ended and whoever peace-oriented leader replaces the current one will need the income to rebuild their country and pay reparations. Additionally, if we adopt a too-far anti-Russian stance, we may see a repeat of post-WW1 Germany.

In short, I do not think you are achieving anything of value by shutting off civilians from your services. You are of course entitled to your opinion and feelings and nobody can force you to do what you disagree with, I just ask that you give it one more thought.

FYI we have updated our policy to make way for those people and organizations that are based in Russia and are fighting against the regime. Same applies to anyone that is not a resident of Russia and has no ties to the regime.

I'm not Russian, and have no sympathy for the oligarchy that oppresses them, but if I had domains on your service, I would have already moved them away. I will never pay you a dime, and I'll see to it that no company I launch or influence ever does either.

May your ill-considered policy be rewarded with bankruptcy.

Yeah. Did you guys is this principled when French NATO razed Libya to ground? I hope in future you will do the same to American as well and not being hypocrite. And China? Good intention but likely just selectively applied and enforced.

Personally I fully support this sort of action. Governments think they can just commit atrocities and get away with it without business owners having any moral duty to intervene in any way they can. In fact, I would support adding more countries to your list, like the United States

It’s scary to see your company give these users such little notice. I am not in Russia but this makes me think twice about using your products.

Bravo. Now west shows their true values. Segregation that is. I hope BRICS will learn this lesson.

I'll be moving my domains elsewhere, even though I have no ties to Russia and am strongly against this invasion. It's really misguided to punish all citizens of a country because a government's actions. You should think a bit deeper about what the actual impact of what you do.

sorry, but Namecheap just redirected millions of dollars of potential help to Ukraine to Putin's regime. Here's my open letter to you, Richard https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/namecheap-just-redirected-mil...

Please help to stop the war, not to fuel it!

I think that governments should put up financial and other sanctions; putting up sanctions with networking would only aid those who set up the not so great Russian firewall, and their Chinese and Vietnamese equivalents. Also fragmenting the internet is a thing that could backfire.

I am trying to send my friends in Russia some info on what is going on in the world, without whatsapp i would not be able do that..

Also it goes both ways, for example there is no equivalent for genlib and sci-hub, there is just no substitute for these resources...

> I sympathize with people that are not pro regime but ultimately even those tax dollars they may generate go to the regime.

So you're forcing everyone with all these Russian .ru domains to buy new services at new registrars, which will generate way way more tax dollars for the Russian government.

Your logic is very flawed!

Splitting your customer base on a political decision is an interesting business choice.

I won't be doing business with Namecheap in the future

What an awful thing to do to people who are probably under high loads of stress already.

You have a responsibility as a key part of the internets infrastructure that goes beyond your politicial viewpoints. The fact that you think your personal viewpoints should override these responsibilities just shows the unadulterated arrogance the world has come to expect from Americans.

Well done pushing Russian people further into the censorship, controlled hole and making this regimes control worse, whilst also betraying the standards of the open internet.

I've initiated transfer of my personal domains (not a Russian, out of choice), and will remove all work domains shortly. I'll also be advising non technical friends and clients to move away, due to untrustworthy business practices.

good for you, moved both my domains over to cloudflare.

Btw, you always used hype to promote yourself, from the times of SOPA & Godaddy sh*t, when you got a lot of clients, including me.

Bye-bye, no more good will for you.

And yes, still no official announcement for this stuff. Your reputation Namecheap is 0 now.

You're not asking people to move, you're actively sabotaging your own clients.

1. You terminate my service on a nationalistic basis. Ok, that's sad, but at least I can move.

2. You charge me for my domain for the period after service termination.

3. You tell "refund or redemption and you can't use your domain for a month or $70".

4. You tell "oopsie whooopsie, to our deepest regret, we have mistakenly cancelled the renewal".

Worst service ever.

You may make whatever decision you like as a company and so can I as a customer. I have about 9 domains with Namecheap and will be moving all of them elsewhere. You have list the trust of me as a customer because I can’t rely on you to do your one and only job.

Btw, do you ban US, Saudi Arabia, UK etc too for their war crimes?

I was surprised by this, until I realized that one of Namecheap's offices is in downtown Kharkiv. Today, the Russian military bombed Kharkiv with cluster munitions [1]. Civilians were killed, possibly including children [2].

Given the severity of the situation, I'm surprised that Namecheap has not opted for more drastic measures- for example, redirecting Russian web traffic. Simply transferring Russian businesses to other providers might be among the less-drastic options they considered.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e42F1V3AOq4&t=150s

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/28/kharkiv-rock...

That does need indeed put it into perspective.

This was a decision made by someone who has heard horror stories and seen their cheery teammates turned into shells of themselves.

> the Russian military bombed Kharkiv with cluster munitions

That's a war crime, right? I hope that the field commanders who carried out these orders are brought to justice.

Unfortunately not. The majority of countries have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, but this doesn't include Russia, or Ukraine, or the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Cluster_Munition...

> That's a war crime, right?

There are videos of Russian troops killing unarmed Ukrainian civilians online, war crimes are committed since day 1

While there are treaties intended to limit the usage of cluster bombs the Russian Federation is not a signatory on any of those. Neither is the United States for that matter.

so dropping cluster bombs on civilian population centers is ok if you didn’t sign an agreement not to?

It's okay as long as you win the war.

The winner won't find themselves guilty of war crimes, but the loser will be.

Just a passing thought: the same incentives exist for extremist terrorist groups, if they win they achieve sovereign immunity absolving all past indiscretions, and maybe a cool new emoji in the next iOS update. when people have nothing to lose they have all to win.

That's only true if you win the war against those who would judge you. Ukraine isn't the judge.

Yep, same with landmines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty

That’s how the world works, unfortunately. NATO did the same thing in Yugoslavia back in 99. No one was held responsible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni%C5%A1_cluster_bombing

Legally, everything is ok for a sovereign nation to do unless there are signed agreements prohibiting it. That's how law works.

Based on what?

it's the common basis of international law. Sovereign nations aren't beholden to anyone else. It's what sovereignty means: they get to do whatever the fuck they want according to their own made-up rules, unless a treaty they have signed explicitly outlaws the thing in question.

There are a lot of treaties governing proper rules of warfare. Russia is entered into many of them. But Russia has not signed any of the treaties outlawing the use of cluster munitions.

Indeed. I would've been sorely tempted to post all Russian customer information including payment details to Ukrainian social media to exploit as they are able. Until this is over I regard every single entity inside the borders of the Russian Federation as persona non grata. Public, private, living or dead. I'm not about to be the guy who postured about legality and politeness when it turns out some of my customers were history's next SS.

That is a terrible idea. As it will certainly out some NGO's, protesters and opposition who are trying to change Russia from within.

They don't just have one office there; elsewhere in this thread, numbers indicate Namecheap is ~95% Ukrainian by headcount.

Given that Russian vodka is blacklisted from stores in USA (and Finland!) and replaced with message "we stand with Ukraine", it's not really surprising.

I read interview with somebody from Russia yesterday, russian tracks getting their tires punctured in EU and get stuck because credit cards don't work anymore. Ships refuse to offload goods in Russian ports and drop them of "wherever in Europe". Russian companies can't buy/rent containers to bring goods to Russia.

It's a lot of collateral damage.

On the other side my brothers in law family in Kharkiv sleeps in hallway for past few days while outside blow up cluster munition delivered by MLRS systems https://twitter.com/YWNReporter/status/1498271572292952064?s...

Edit: just to add, I myself was born in Kyiv. Company where I work now has officies both in Ukraine (in one of hotter places) and in russia. I am equally trying to help my colleagues from both offices to GTFO. Collateral damage is unfortunate for private person but frankly not surprising. What is "surprising" it's that a big chunk of Russian population is surprised by it

Truly awful. If you listen to Russian news (propaganda) they're claiming Ukranians want Russia to come liberate them and save them from poor living conditions. It's almost as if they forgot that people have the internet.

Internet doesn't help. I saw screenshots of bunch of chats between relatives in Ukraine and Russia in first couple of days. People from Russia claim that Ukrainians are brainwashed, russia comes to liberate them and only neo-nazis are fighting back and shooting into cities.

There is also articles on official new sites (like RIA) that neo-nazis are executing Ukranian Military personal that doesn't want to fight.

Internet doesn't help. It's all about bubble...

As very unpleasant example, my father who lived most of his live in Kyiv but lives in Germany for past 15 years or so, is consuming only russian media. He is sure that Ukraine is ruled by neo-nazis from bunkers in Kyiv and whatever Russia is doing it's appropriate. This was his opinion after first day. Don't think that it changed

> Internet doesn't help.

Just ask anyone who has moved to Seattle, but has conservative family back in their home state. Folks believe we live in an anarchist hellscape. Myself and several friends have had the experience of being called liars by family members who trust Fox News over the word of their blood relatives. It's absolutely maddening.

I mean, Seattle is a hellscape to me lol. I mostly kid, i live south of Tacoma, i just hate the homeless problem in Olympia, Seattle. The roads in southern Seattle also make me want to die hah.

Anyway, just making local-jokes mostly. Not actually attacking Seattle :)

edit: Is it because i was kidding, or is very mild criticism of Seattle not appreciated? It's not like i live in Texas and have never been there lol.

I think it's because it is off topic, and also HN generally does not like humor, unless it's particularly clever.

Fair, thanks for the reply. It was only half humor though, as a local i do genuinely hate much of the city. However, i'm not "city local" if that makes sense.

But it's not unique to Seattle. Tacoma and Olympia (where i live) is bad too. Cities just suck these days it seems.

Same thing in Portland. People think Antifa burned the city to the ground.

Washington state isn't a paradise, there are lots of wrong things going on primarily with government overreach and the abuse of emergency powers. It's setting a dangerous precedent.

I actually moved out of Seattle after 4 months in 2021 because compared to the cities I was used to in Canada, it was quite literally a hellscape. Shuttered stores, screaming homeless people, and parks which resemble refugee camps.

I understand it was exacerbated by covid and the BLM riots of 2020, but I don’t think people are exaggerating when they say that much of Seattle is a pretty shocking place to be.

Genuinely curious, how does he see the US, UK, EU etc helping Ukraine? Does he think all those countries are ruled by neo-nazis as well? Or does he not know the country he currently lives in is helping Ukraine because he only consume Russian media?

He thinks that all of this western propaganda and lies and western media fabrication. I frankly couldn't have this conversation with him because this is just god damn hard. Asked my brother who lives with him to do it. He tried once and dropped topic completely.

Think q-anon level of brainwash. Or some cult, donno.

My wifes parents are in same "state". It took her a few years to come to peace with it :/ Logical discussions with them not possible

Got links to those screenshots?

They are days in the past in the LJ. It's eternity. Not possible to find. But once in a while somebody from ukraine posts messages from friends in russia that "soon you will be liberated and you will understand everything" or something like this.

One of the best that i saw it's claim that because what is Putin doing is okay under russian law and was approved by duma, there by definition can't be anything wrong with it.

Ah. Classic.

Living in <western ccountry> for <more than a decade> [0], telling how putin's russia is a heaven, and west is rotten gay propaganda hellscape.

Asking why they are not moving back to russia usually leaves them speechless.

russian propaganda/troll machine is next level, I could give them that. goebbels would be proud.

[0] If there's a significant russian speaking diaspora it's not unusual that such people do not understand local language almost at all, even after living for decades.

The internet, right? How else will they learn that President Trump (not the illegitimate so-called-president Biden) supports our great leader Putin!

I don't understand how "collateral damage" is relevant. Aren't people supposed to minimize collateral damage? Namecheap didn't HAVE to do this. The chose to do this in a very particular way, which hurt its customers, especially those opposing Putin's regime and currently fleeing the country.

I'd be open to making exceptions in cases that are anti-regime.

That sounds very "you're either against us or with us".

Yes, this happens very quickly in war time.

No, it sounds like a superpower attacked a sovereign country for no other reason than conquest, and we all do what we can to fight back.

The middle ground is an infinitesimal wide line between Russia and Ukraine called 'the border', and more accurately the line is right now around Russia, Belarus and Chechnya soon to follow. If you are on the other side of that line then you will suffer economically, but not nearly as much as when you are inside Ukraine where you could very well lose your life.

Chechnya it's actually part of russia

It is now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechen%E2%80%93Russian_confli...

If you're an economic actor in Russia & aren't actively aiming to end the current regime, you are the target. It's not a coincidence. Invoking Orwellian analogies stops making sense when it's a war.

I don't think it's possible for a private company to implement a process that can provide "anti-regime exceptions" though. Would you request evidence of anti-regime activity?

(Edited for clarity)

Why not just migrate the domains at that point and be done with it?

I understand the arguments about individuals and how it could be a burden with all that's going on, but a private company? What's the argument?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_foreign_agent_law

The best|worst situation here would be if NamecheapCEO would think this is how it should be. I would laugh my ass off on this hypocrisy.

So after five plus years of being a client, a private company will be deciding whether I'm worthy of their service or not based on whether I got my teeth kicked in during the protest actions for the past few days?

Should I e-mail some photos of my bruises left by police batons on my ribs? Or maybe I should kneel?

This is humiliating, and you know it. You're just making more problems and creating more danger for absolutely innocent people, just in spite.

This is the essence of cancel culture, now on a national level.

Sadly its either these actions or tanks. And if the west would send tanks to Ukraine it'd be WW3. Its the lesser evil now sadly.

Apologies for the language -- but are you mental?

I do get the idea of sanctions -- I'm legally prevented by publicly commenting on this due to some Russian law -- but I understand if a foreign business body has to terminate its business relations with a Russian one.

But kicking out paid customers just based on their nationality, knowing that they have no direct control over situation, and still blaming them for it? This is f**d up, I'm sorry.

Please don't cross into personal attack. I know you're under pressure, and other people are in terrible situations. We can't allow HN users to start taking that out on each other.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It would be much preferable for Russians as a whole for the West to send tanks to Ukraine to engage the invading troops. And no, it wouldn't automatically be WW3, either. It would be if the tanks crossed the Russian border, but they don't have to do so to break the invasion.

Putin called for the nukes to be put on High Alert before there was any threat of direct NATO action (and there is still no talk of any). What is the next step? "Higher" alert?

MORE direct combattants, _especially_ from other superpowers, is the last thing that we need. Adding additional powerderkegs to the existing fire does nothing to stop it.

>What is the next step? "Higher" alert?

Essentially yes. The current step is the equivalent of DEFCON 3.

To extend on your fire analogy, it's not just a fire, it's arson - and the arsonist is still there, sprinkling gas around and throwing matches. You can't extinguish the fire without dealing with the arsonist.

As for Putin, he's basically a gopnik. There's a Russian word for what these guys do - "быковать", literally "bulling", but it's basically a display of aggression to establish oneself higher in the hierarchy and to make the victim afraid to fight back. If you acquiesce to gopnik's demands, he will come up with more, until the point where he "justifiably" takes away your phone and wallet.

I hate to break it to you, but Russia started a war! Russia, the place where Russian citizens live, protected by an army of Russians. Russia is not some ephemeral theoretical quantity, it's a state governing its people with their consent. The preferences of their citizens are not a priority and, if you feel that consent has vanished, the only one who can do anything about it is you.

I'm not sure how this relates to anything in my comment.

>And if the west would send tanks to Ukraine it'd be WW3

that tired misconception should be dropped. West can send any weapons to Ukraine, and volunteers from West, trained tank drivers and pilots, can drive those Abrams tanks and fly those F-16 planes. Russia and China has been doing "volunteer" trick just fine.

World needs to start to learn to deal with such situations. China/Taiwan is coming and total sanctions regime wouldn't be possible with China.

I cannot shake the weird feeling that in the united states almost everything is left to the free market, even sanctions.

> This is the essence of cancel culture, now on a national level.

We need to lose that term. It's not cancel culture to decide who you do and don't want to associate with, or do business with. That's freedom. The people being rejected only think their own freedom matters. Unless they are a protected class, that simply isn't true.

It's not even spite. Spite at least has some emotion in it. This is lazy virtue signaling of the kind that sounds impressive when you've been bought enough drinks to forego further explanation of who this is actually helping.

To reduce the actions of a company protecting the interests of Ukrainian employees to Western political buzzwords is facile.

It's a shitty enough situation that some of those things would seem to be necessary in order to persuade your service provider to keep service up. Automatically billing your credit card for a few years doesn't really say as much.

I find what Russian government doing completely disgusting and savage. I'm totally against this war. Any war for that matter.

I have many domains at Namecheap and I will not be able to afford transfer them out due to financial situation.

Is there any way I can still keep domains at Namecheap? Which cases are anti-regime?

> Is there any way I can still keep domains at Namecheap?

Use a Russian registrar. Or leave Russia. This sucks. War sucks. But I don’t see how anyone can continue doing business in Russia while maintaining a clean conscience.

OK. What should I do if I don't fall under a refugee description, don't have any immediate family in the EU, my diploma means nothing to EU, and have no bag of gold to immigrate illegaly?

This is me, plain and simple. I would like to immigrate, but I have no legal grounds.

Serious question, no gimmicks or laughs: should I die or be cancelled by the rest of the world?

> should I die or be cancelled by the rest of the world?

You should not die. But you don’t have an inaliable right to thrive in your country.

Again, not trying to be a dick. War sucks. I am truly sorry you’re hurting. And I am not suggesting it’s your duty to join a resistance movement or whatever. But these are considerations and costs we must all weigh when our governments do horrible things. Most of the time, sadly, the world won’t care. We (America) have war criminals who should be in jail. But occasionally, the world gets horrified and rises to the occasion. Even that occasional threat is better than nothing.

This is a nice sentiment, but in the meantime, we're getting F'd for the actions we tried to stop. We failed, but we did the best we could, without resorting to violence.

I agree, this is not enough. But this is by no means an excuse to cancel an entire nation.

Agreed, but it beats having your country invaded, your cities shelled and starved. That's what is in the balance, compared to that you have a luxury situation.

That's the point. I'm not the one shelling another one's country, even so -- I'm doing everything in my power to prevent it. Instead, commercial service decides to capitalize their PR value on it, and decides to cause even more harm than already have been caused.

This cannot be justified.

No, this is not about PR, this is about their employees. This isn't a press release, it was a message to a customer.

What bugs me is that they did not make a distinction between private individuals and corporations, if I were in their position I would have let the private individuals go, they are Russians, not Russia.

Even so: every Russian citizen and every Russian company that is currently relying on businesses in the West such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and so on should expect those services to be cut off at some point in the near future.

> You should not die. But you don’t have an inaliable[sic] right to thrive in your country.

The most disgustingly american thing ever said.

Political asylum.

Please consider: you might loose some domains. Ukrainians are losing their lives.

How do you reconcile your actions with your claims of protecting free speech and the First Amendment? (https://www.namecheap.com/blog/internet-freedom-the-state-of...)

Where do you get off reneging contracts and fleecing people of their money based solely on longitude and latitude and TLD?

> Where do you get off reneging contracts and fleecing people of their money based solely on longitude and latitude and TLD?

They’re terminating their contract, not reneging.

>re·nege

>verb

> go back on a promise, undertaking, or contract.

If you entered into an agreement to provide service (eg. provide domain registration for one year), and one side unilaterally terminates the relationship, that sounds pretty close to reneging. In addition, the CEO have promised refunds for some services, but not domain registrations. In that case you quite literally paid for one year of service, and are not getting that.

In this case, the two are not mutually exclusive. Every Russian domain purchaser and every individual with a domain under the aforementioned TLDs that had, even as recently as yesterday, purchased a 1-year registration from Namecheap is now being provided a week of service at best. You tell me how that's not reneging.

The first amendment makes speech protected from state action. The government of the United States of America is bound by law to not suppress the political speech of its citizens. I don't think it is relevant to international boycotts, in letter or in spirit.

The point is that Namecheap parades itself as a defender of the First Amendment, while simultaneously robbing people of a vehicle of self-expression that these people have paid for. I know the language of the First Amendment doesn't prohibit Namecheap from saying the will no longer initiate or do any business with Russians. However, it's hypocritical all the same when they criticize the similar actions being taken by the US government.

>I don't think it is relevant to international boycotts, in letter or in spirit

Of course the First Amendment is relevant to international boycotts. How else would Namecheap half-assingly justifying its premature pullout? If they don't want to renew those domains after a year is up, I wouldn't have a problem, but that's not the case.

My issue is not Namecheap's boycott in and of itself, but the process of damning a host of individuals on the barest of relations to the Russian government while having the gall to take their money and run away.

> The point is that Namecheap parades itself as a defender of the First Amendment, while simultaneously robbing people of a vehicle of self-expression that they have paid for.

I think this is conflating two issues that are altogether very different. In the first, Name cheap was pro section 230 protection, because without it they believed that they would have no choice but to censor people due to the potential for legal liabilities incurred without those protections. They were not advocating for the right of people to not be deplatformed due to their speech. And that isn't even what is happening here, namecheap is deciding to boycott Russia because of the actions of the Russian government, not the speech of the individual Russians. The first amendment in spirit is about protecting citizens from the state and absolutely does not mandate who you do business with and why. There are other laws for protected classes in the US but the whole issue of US law just seems absolutely disjointed in my mind.

> Of course the First Amendment is relevant to international boycotts. How else would Namecheap half-assingly justifying its premature pullout?

I don't follow at all, sorry. They make no reference to the first amendment, they simply believe it is not in their best interests to do business with Russian citizens at this time because of the actions of the Russian government. This kind of boycott strategy happens all the time.

As I've said before, this is about Namecheap's self-portrayed values. It defends its Section 230 protection on the premise of protecting its and others' rights to speak freely. Given today's circumstances, it seems that reasoning is false.

To quote Namecheap:

"As citizens ourselves, we embrace the joy of hearing all voices. The power to regulate or restrict speech or expression concentrated in the hands of only a few big tech companies is not how we want those decisions made for us."

And what has it done today? It's nakedly hypocritical that Namecheap engages in those same restrictions against its own customers. If they just said "We're a business for free speech when said speech is convenient to our interests. Take it or leave it", that wouldn't be so much of an issue.

> the actions of the Russian government, not the speech of the individual Russians

> they simply believe it is not in their best interests to do business with Russian citizens at this time because of the actions of the Russian government. This kind of boycott strategy happens all the time.

Then why dissociate on the basis of TLDs of which many Americans may be domain holders? Or why is it that individual Russians citizens are having their websites taken down for the actions of their government? Namecheap is not being selective or proportionate.

I think you really have to stretch the "we enjoy hearing all voices" line to get it to read "we should do business with a regime threatening the world with nuclear war."

I don't agree that closing up shop in a neighborhood after someone there threatens you with violence, is a free speech issue, even if the shop was selling posterboard and markers you could use for signs to exercise free speech.

> Then why dissociate on the basis of TLDs of which many Americans may be domain holders? Or why is it that individual Russians citizens are having their websites taken down for the actions of their government? Namecheap is not being selective or proportionate.

I agree this is fair criticism. I don't know enough about their business to know if there is a better way they could be selective.

An obsession with the right to free speech over all other rights is invoking Poe's law if it's now being advocated for in the case of a warmongering adversarial state. While it's not the aim of this move, during every war, communications of the enemy are hindered. The First Amendment would never have been written if the authors valued the rights of British Soldiers as much as their own.

The Russian government is not marching on Ukraine. There are no bureaucrats and politicians driving tanks. Russia's army is. And it's Russia's people who give power to the state to direct them. It would be absurd for an uncaring Russian individual to complain about essentially paltry financial or logistical issues as while being complicit in the erosion of Ukranian individuals' right to life.

>An obsession with the right to free speech over all other rights is invoking Poe's law if it's now being advocated for in the case of a warmongering adversarial state.

Should US citizens have been cut off from registrar providers in 2003 because of the war in Iraq? Let's be consistent here. If you think that a state being an adversarial warmonger is the requirement to deny it's people a service they paid for, even the one's who never wanted a war, then every person on the planet is liable by proxy of their current or previous governments.

>While it's not the aim of this move, during every war, communications of the enemy are hindered.

By an army against another army, not a private organization against civilians. Namecheap is not a military or paramilitary organization. Namecheap is a private business, and is still subject to US laws as a private business. Hindering communications of an "enemy" isn't a justification for outright financial fraud.

>The First Amendment would never have been written if the authors valued the rights of British Soldiers as much as their own.

I'm not able to follow what this is supposed to mean. British soldiers at the direction of the Crown violated the rights of empire's own subjects under the Coercive Acts and initiated violence in Concord & Lexington. The soldiers made their bed. The Bill of Rights were not ratified until until 1791, well after the war.

>The Russian government is not marching on Ukraine. There are no bureaucrats and politicians driving tanks. Russia's army is.

Who's directing the army? Who's the one in control of those nuclear warheads being brought out. The civilians aren't the one's driving BMPs or flying MI-8s. Most if pressed, couldn't even point to Kyiv on a map. I don't know if you're either absolving Putin of his actions as though he doesn't have free will or claiming everyone in Russia is as guilty as he is for being Russian, but this is a terrible argument.

>And it's Russia's people who give power to the state to direct them.

This is a false premise. It's almost laughable. You're conflating American jurisprudence with the politics of the Kremlin. In case you haven't noticed, the Russian government is not a government by the people or for the people.

>It would be absurd for an uncaring Russian individual to complain about essentially paltry financial or logistical issues as while being complicit in the erosion of Ukranian individuals' right to life.

In short: "Ukrainians have it worse, so Russian civilians should accept what's doled out to them". If you can think there can only be one victim at any one time, then I've got news for you.

I dunno, did you try to get a registrar from a provider in Iraq? I don't think you would have much luck.

>This is a false premise. It's almost laughable. You're conflating American jurisprudence with the politics of the Kremlin. In case you haven't noticed, the Russian government is not a government by the people or for the people.

They have far more influence than the people of Ukraine.

>In short: "Ukrainians have it worse, so Russian civilians should accept what's doled out to them". If you can think there can only be one victim at any one time, then I've got news for you.

So Ukraine's people should not shoot back?

Independent of my feelings on this - how is doing exactly what the contract states reneging?

> Namecheap expressly reserves the right to deny, cancel, terminate, suspend, lock, or modify access to (or control of) any account or any Services (including the right to cancel or transfer any domain name registration) for any reason (as determined by Namecheap in its sole and absolute discretion), including but not limited to the following: <SNIP MORE OF THE SAME>

from - https://www.namecheap.com/legal/universal/universal-tos/

Those terms of service documents that no one reads are part of, if not all the of the contract. Most service providers have the same (effectively anyway) clause in them. They also have clauses that allow them to modify their terms of service any way they want.

Unless someone has a different, specifically negotiated contract with the company that states otherwise - this is not a violation rightly or wrongly. This is why a lot of B2B involves contract negotiation that takes a long time, those businesses can't tolerate the instability of a contract that can be terminated or changed on a whim.

I'm aware that almost every registrar has similar terms. However, according to ICANN's registrant benefits and responsibilities page, a registrar can't just take someone's money away. To quote Domain Name Registrants' Rights, Paragraph 3

"You [Domain Name Registrant] shall not be subject to false advertising or deceptive practices by your Registrar or though any proxy or privacy services made available by your Registrar. This includes deceptive notices, hidden fees, and any practices that are illegal under the consumer protection law of your residence"

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/benefits-2013-09-16-en

IANAL, but I'm quite sure that failure to render services for payment counts as an illegal action under consumer protection laws in Russia and elsewhere.

you have to think twice and careful before getting involved in political ideas hitting people like me even not Russian. If you want a war with me, I'm ready, it's exactly what you did, you are provoking ordinary people againt you.

A lot of sites (with domains in non-RU tld) that coordinate, help, inform people about what's really going on are under great pressure from Putin's regime. Sites are getting blocked, people are getting fined and jailed.

Now you are joining this effort on behalf of Putin. Good job, товарищ! Please report to Russian embassy to get your 30 silver pieces.

I don't want to start flame war, and I really feel bad for your situation for for situation of many other people who opposed Putin regime who got majorly f(&d today (my head was spinning last few days as I saw russian economy falling through the bottom while city where I born is shelled), but... actions (or not actions) of Russian population over past 20 years created today's situation (don't tell me that you don't know the common opinion in russia that Ukrainians not really nation and do not deserve their own state). You are unfortunately collateral damage of your own actions, not of those of EU. EU and rest of the world trying to do damage control.

I really do sorry for your situation, I really hope that namecheap will work out with you. I do hope that EU and other countries will extend humanitarian visas to people that try to escape russia now before iron curtain will fall down. Yet, at this moment, it is what it is.

The only way to make change is to inconvenience people.

This is what sanctions are. Blocking bank accounts also hurts the people trying to flee, but it's one of the standard sanctions. It seems that everyone is hoping that making the Russian people's lives more difficult will make them stop supporting Putin and he will end the attack because of that. Why a dictator would care at all whether citizens support him or not is unlear to me, so I can't imagine any of this is going to be particularly effective.

> Putin’s public approval is soaring during the Russia-Ukraine crisis, but it’s unlikely to last

> Approximately 69% of Russians now approve of Putin, compared to the 61% who approved of him in August 2021

https://theconversation.com/putins-public-approval-is-soarin...

How is that any relevant? It's still nearly double Biden's "public approval" and yet...

Historically I can't find any significant example of sanctions that helped topple a dictator from outside (Iran, Cuba, Syria, ...)

It might very well be inflicting lots of suffering on the populations, for no result.

What would be the better alternative? It seems direct military action by NATO/else is far removed from the table. Should the rest of the world remain silent and allow this to continue without any repercussions?

I am genuinely asking, as I have not been presented with any preferable alternatives.

Sanctions did a lot to end apartheid - granted, not a single dictator

I think there's a solid chance that they can twist it in a way that bolsters support for Putin.

He's long said something like "when the West hates me, that's when I'm on the right path." (My paraphrase from memory)

So the population is perhaps primed for another conclusion.

Putin has really been playing up the West’s “Russophobia” leading up to the invasion and I worry that social media has caused some of these “sanctions” to get out of hand really quickly with everyone piling on to the point some of the actions are, indeed, Russophobic. Cutting off service for Russian people who aren’t even living in Russia seems like it crosses that line to me.

Unfortunately this is a double edged sword.

Many times the West was very hesitant on acting against russia's shenanigans (most notably Georgia and Crimea), because "it will hurt the common person and not those who are making decisions".

Now russia is in de facto conventional war with Ukraine and in information/business war with __all__ of the West. putin is out of ideas and freaking blasting cities with bombs like it's London 1940. The West is still not enganging russia in conventional war, due to nukes, but if it's war why one side needs to cry, run, starve and die, when other nation can sit by their propaganda tv and eat the kool-aid.

In this new information age it's the only possible resistance against the regime - Iron Curtain 2.0. The West cannot win informational war inside russia. Those who know english and know how to use internet are mostly young Moscovites, everyone else is sucked into propaganda, there's not enough critical mass. Propaganda is at the same level that Germans did not know or believe that there are concentration camps next door.

Either topple the regime, leave [0] or be living under Iron Curtain 2.0 stand in lines for bread with your money that are worthless.

I believe the West tried for the longest time not to play into this "russophobia" card. The sanctions definitely work together with russian propaganda ("look wht those evil gay nazi imperialist west are doing for simple russian people"). And for the longest time big players like DE, UK, FR did not understand putin, compared to how post-soviet countries like the Baltics and Poland warned. DE for the longest time that you can work with putin like any other liberal democratic leader. Now all this is in the trash and everyone is united against putin.

I am repeating myself - but I guess it's the only way to work against putin. Conventional war with other superpowers will most likely mean nukes, i.e. end of the human world.

[0] I bet many young people from Moscow or Peter will attempt to do this.

Not that it makes a whole lot of difference, but those explosions don't appear to cluster munitions.

Probably some kind of fragmentation rocket fired from a grad[0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BM-21_Grad

They been finding cassetes. Most likely uragan. grad is more straight-forward. Also in another bombardment were found scattered around those lovely things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFM-1 . It's also been shot by uragan

These do look like submunitions, though: https://twitter.com/_____Tweety____/status/14983843018298941...

At least I don't see any rockets in any of the frames. And the explosions don't seem that big.

With a cluster bomb/submunitions, you should see a bunch of impacts all at the same time, in this video the impacts all seem to be spaced apart at a rate similar to the fire rate of a grad.

With the frame rate and resolution of the video, it isn't surprising that it's hard to see a rocket.

The rockets look like fragmentation warheads, you can see a lot of shrapnel get thrown off on each impact, frag explosions won't look as large or bright as other kinds of HE warheads.

Do non-submunition warheads separate from the rocket in the air? Because rockets are 3m long, and I don't think they'd just disappear after the warhead explosion. In other videos you could see rocket bodies sticking from the pavement after impact, etc.

Anyway, I guess you're right. Even if this was edge of the killing field with a mix of submunitions from various rockets fired at different times, there's be a lot of noise in the video from the other submunitions hitting nearby.

It may interest you to know that Namecheap, just a few days ago, banned a few domain names purely based on an ambiguous tweet that got 8 likes, that didn't even ask for those domains to be banned or cite any ToS violation.

https://twitter.com/Namecheap/status/1489485337885921284

Namecheap then reverted that decision when they got ratioed (with no tweets supporting their decision). I've never heard of these domain names and don't keep up with crypto, but it doesn't seem like they did much research before banning them.

I was thinking of switching everything to Namecheap just a week ago, because of a friend's recommendation based on their ease-of-use.

Because of this Twitter story, and the Russian suspension, I'm now glad I didn't. You can't cancel users' service, that they paid for, and give them only a week's notice. I'm not Russian but this volatile style of customer relationships totally destroys any trust I could have in them.

I'll be closing my account as well, thanks for letting us know about this.

It's scary how many organizations are just straight up outsourcing their decision making to Twitter.

it's just marketing with feedback, and it's hardly the scary part. Elections are being decided on twitter

This "Mean Girls" style of running a company is not something I'm willing to accept even for remotely important services.

Banning access by the country bombing your offices and employees seems rational. How is it "Mean girls" behavior?

Country != It's citizens that are paying for the service

The taxes of those citizens are being used for the bombs being dropped on the homes of namecheap employees. Continuing to provide services for their profit is not harmless.

Owning a domain name does not necessarily increase the citizens taxable income in any way.

Removing access is indisputably harmful.

Thanks for sharing. I won't be using Namecheap for anything of consequence.

Me too. I was feeling pretty bad seeing this announcement, but after seeing several examples of how this is a cowboy operation, I'm finding it hard to take them as seriously now. Move on, avoid, and remind people why I do so in the future when this has blown over.

My concern is not with them banning Russia. I think that's fine.

I'm more worried about them banning accounts over random twitter posts.

Indeed, banning Russia could be argued is an understandable position.

But banning accounts over somebody's tweets, that is madness.

There are hundreds of cases like this. Namecheap is by far the worst registrar I've had the displeasure of using.

I guess you've never been exposed to Network Solutions.

––– Twitter Conversation –––

[Twitter User A]

  Can anyone explain to me what the @UoT_Foundation is?

[Twitter User B]

  Track the wallets. Where do they go? They all sound like pretty catchy marketing names to me [...]

  All registered on Namecheap within 5 days of each other. All from Iceland (IS). Two of them using pretty much the exact same AWS nameservers. Hmmm. This isn't even tracking wallets.

[Namecheap.com]

  Hello! We have suspended the abusive services

–––

Wow! To be able to terminate someone's domain with a few tweets. This is absolutely insane! I have many domains with Namecheap. I might reconsider my domain provider after this.

Thor project is run by scammers. Good move NC

That’s for a judge to decide, not some helpdesk intern.

A private company is free to enforce their terms of service. You have no reason to imply their actions are uninformed by saying they are an "intern"

Reminds me of the time they flagged my account as fraudulent and locked me out of my domains. They ignored me until I blew them up on social media, then they said it was a mistake. I am a US citizen and do not do anything out of the ordinary. This was back in 2016. I immediately moved my domains away.

I am moving my domains off NameCheap too. This is ridiculous behaviour from a for-profit organisation; the only transaction I am interested in with Namecheap is I give you money and you act as the middle man in registering my domain.

Spare me the political and social grandstanding. I am not interested in your views on either topic.

It looks like Namecheap has 1700 employees in Ukraine and an office in Kharkiv: https://www.namecheap.com/careers/ukraine

Spare him!

Some people are getting bombed and invaded.

And you complain about moving domain names.

God I hate web developers...

And namecheap banning russian TLDs will not stop the bombings, will not stop Putin, and will not help Ukraine.

I hate people who think they can solve geopolitical problems with SQL commands.

Trade and economic sanctions each chip away at the Russian oligarchy, who Putin does listen to.

"Stops bombs" isn't the minimum bar for behavior affecting change.

What happened to "business owners have the right to refuse service or turn away customers" ?

> Spare me the political and social grandstanding. I am not interested in your views on either topic.

Like it or not everything is politcal

I guess it goes both ways, doesn't it? Cos do what they want, and so do customers. All us 3rd parties can do is shrug our shoulders.

They banned doxajournal.ru, a student news organizing publishing anti-putin information.

They have 1700 staff in Ukraine, by far the majority of their employees, so it's not surprising that they see things differently to others.

https://www.namecheap.com/careers/ukraine/

I don't know how this is relevant. I am very much against this war, but there is very little I can do to stop it as a regular citizen. I'm currently doing everything I can to flee the country, as I don't think my family is not safe here. I don't understand how this is supposed to harm Putin's regime or any of his supporters.

May be it is more for the sake of their team and not you.

I think you're right. I've changed my perspective on this issue and added some clarifying comments in the thread.

Disrupting the everyday lives of Russian citizens is an effective way to incite change. Some will choose to flee the chaos, but some will choose to protest and fight the regime.

Will there be good Russians unfairly hurt as collateral damage? Yes.

But the Ukrainian civilians being gunned down in the streets and having their homes blown up are also being unfairly hurt. There is very little they can do to stop it, but they've been forced to drop everything and fight.

Like it or not, you're on one side of a war. It's to be expected that your life will be inconvenienced - so have lives on the other side. You can flee - nothing wrong with that - or you can protest, but you can't hope that you won't be impacted.

> Disrupting the everyday lives of Russian citizens

No it doesnt because is not a democratic country, why is it so hard for people like you to understand that things work very different in a democratic country than in non-democratic country?

Do you know what happens when you are in a country that doesnt respect human rights and you go to "protest"?

Do you know what happens when you, as a citizen with no power, try to fight a military regime?

Do you really think, russians right now are enjoyinig this and will somehow march to get Putin's head because their quality of life will be miserable now? no, they wont, because the moment they start doing it, they will be repressed and killed, and there you will be, super happy sharing your support posts to those people

the worst part of all of these, is that you don't realize that one of the goals of putin is to undermine his own state, so he can keep power for the years to come, and here you are, helping him :), good job at making every russian life even worse.

Putin is in his 70s. He does not have years to come.

No place was born a democracy.

Protest isn't even a necessary event. If the reward of continuing the war becomes less than the damage of continuing it, it only needs Putin. Regardless, he always enjoyed a very high approval rating while amassing his position.

>Do you know what happens when you are in a country that doesnt respect human rights and you go to "protest"?

>Do you know what happens when you, as a citizen with no power, try to fight a military regime?

Luckily I am not Ukrainian, so I am not having this discovery forced upon me.

"No it doesnt because is not a democratic country, why is it so hard for people like you to understand that things work very different in a democratic country than in non-democratic country?"

I sympathize with this position but I also feel conflicted because despite the enormous amount of evidence that Putin was a bad guy as recently as 2017 he had 80+% approval rating. If had not had large scale popular support for most of the last 20 years despite his anti-democratic anti-freedom behaviour would he be in a position to execute this war?

I don't have good answers for this question but just as democracy isn't just having a vote political support in a non-democracy isn't just having the legal use of violence at your disposal. It is challenging for anyone from outside Russia that wants to oppose his regime to find a way that doesn't hurt ordinary Russians if most ordinary Russians mostly have supported him.

Do you think the Ukrainians after enjoying this?

They cannot put every Russian in jail, if you are not on the streets and burning the Kremlin you clearly don't care enough

Flagging this because you are literally inciting Russian civilians to get themselves killed.

What do you think is the ratio of Policeman to Citizen in Russia?

What if police would join the protest?

This line of argument leads to dropping cruise missiles on “strategic targets” …

Maybe if we blow up enough Russian power plants they’ll spontaneously overthrow Putin!

Yup, it's actually making things harder for us to move away from Russia. One more thing to deal with. And this NameCheap's decision didn't hurt Putin even a tiny bit.

> And this NameCheap's decision didn't hurt Putin even a tiny bit.

IOC lists have been plagued with domains registered through Namecheap for years.

Namecheap is doing this for ideological reasons but this single action should (in theory) disrupt a lot of existing malware connections to hostile infrastructure.

Good luck to you. Seriously.

But what does anyone expect? All this international business depends on stable, peaceful relations. Russia broke that. The party will not go on.

We know you're not personally responsible for the invasion of Ukraine. And that's not any different than the embargoes during any prior armed conflict.

Absolutely. I know this is Putin's War, but imagine asking your staff to be professional and respond to your Russian customers when they can hear Russian fighter jets overhead.

On one hand we ask large companies to show more heart and humanity, and on the other hand we rail against them when they take a principled stand.

How anyone can expect a company to honour any corporate agreement in such an environment boggles my mind. Let alone company that sells domains and prides itself on being 'cheap'.

People and principles should come first, and money second. This is exactly the world we want to live in, right? Not some capitalist dystopia.

FWIW, I do not begrudge affected customers being angry, that seems very fair. I just also think this is a very reasonable course of action by Namecheap.

I wish they included that bit in their outreach based on a lot of comments in this thread. It probably would've helped add some additional perspective into their decision making.

(This is one of those threads where we also thank dang for this service.)

"They should stay neutral in all this!!" – people sitting comfortably in a first world country opining about a company whose 1700 employees in Ukraine – including in Kharkiv – (https://www.namecheap.com/careers/ukraine/) are literally getting murdered as we speak. What should they do? Keep taking support calls from Russia while their missiles rain from above?

Given the amount of “just contact support” replies from the CEO it seems all they’ll be doing from now on is taking russian support calls.

Yes, to everyone who is saying "why don't you block Americans for their war crimes as well?" Maybe they would, if American bombs were falling on their city.

So in "the Russian regime's war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine", the "in Ukraine" is the important part.

The actual message is "you are our enemy and we don't want to provide services for you" - which is fair enough, but not palatable by current business standards, so they instead couch it in moralistic high-ground terms that they can selectively apply.

It doesn't seem productive to attack the wording. A substantive objection would be more meaningful.

This isn't about some nuance of wording at all. They are claiming A when they actually mean B, and my comment spells that out. Framing it as some trivial attack on wording is disingenuous. By that measure, any criticism of lies, misinformation, false messaging, etc. would become a quibble over wording.

I hope there's some substantive response to my original comment's content too, one that could lead to productive discussion.

They didn't lie or mislead. You misread their original message. You uncharitably assumed they were a bunch of nasty internet SJWs. You then called them disingenuous when that didn't turn out to be the case.

Sorry if that isn't accurate, I know it sucks when people misrepresent your words.

It would take quite some mental gymnastics to not read "the fact is, your authoritarian government is committing human rights abuses and engaging in war crimes so this is a policy decision we have made and will stand by" as taking a moralistic high ground. (Although, "Internet SJWs" seems to have unfortunately originated in your own mind). My point is that this is not a policy they seem to consistently hold and so their actual reasons are different.

The "disingenuous" label was about your comment, and you've further proven yourself to be so. Continuing this thread with you will most likely be unproductive.

I am frankly shocked and dismayed at the number of people deriding this decision. In a grey world this seems like such a black and white thing. Sure it may inconvenience a few, but on the other hand innocents are being slaughtered. All the weight of these complaints don't even begin to touch the scale when compared to literal children being murdered.

Besides all that, Namecheap is a private company and can do business with whomever they wish.

Yeah, the employees of Namecheap are going to sleep wondering if they're going to wake up or just die in a hail of Russian MLRS rockets. Meanwhile half this forum is very concerned that Namecheap's actions sounds too much like woke cancel culture.

Some people are so online they can't see the difference between an inflammatory tweet and incendiary bomb.

If it inconvenienced the few for the sake of improving matters for those innocents, that would be a different matter. But it doesn't actually do anything of a kind.

Doesn’t it though? It is in effect part of a larger parcel of sanctions the west is applying to Russia for their actions, and in that light is only one tiny lever; but if enough levers can be applied then I firmly believe there is hope for change for Russia.

Turning SWIFT off for Russia does actually hurt the ability of the Russian government to finance its operations. But this action does not, and that was exactly my point.

That aside, there seems to be this popular sentiment that if sanctions hurt your average Russian enough, they will revolt. I don't know why it's so popular given that it never worked out like that in the past. North Korea got to the point where they were literally eating grass in the 90s, and the Kims are still there.

I don't agree, this is another friction to the Russian economy that directly hurts the Russian government's ability and will to continue.

>North Korea got to the point where they were literally eating grass in the 90s, and the Kims are still there.

And Putin's goal is to end up begging China for food?

> And Putin's goal is to end up begging China for food?

I wouldn't be surprised. It will just be branded as something else. Unless China slaps equivalent sanctions, Russia will likely become a Chinese vassal. Future generations of Russians will grow up learning how China saved them from "Western aggression".

How exactly does it hurt the Russian government's ability to do anything?

And as for food, Russia is already a net exporter.

simply, it puts inner pressure on him. if enough people in Russia feel the war on them, then they will stand up.

I reiterate: there's not a single example of that working in the history of sanctions against authoritarian regimes, ever.

The reason why there isn't one is because whatever sanctions you can come up with, they cannot make life harder than said authoritarian regime for people inside the country if they tried to "stand up". You might be eating less because of sanctions, but standing up means you'll be eating even less in prison - assuming you live to see it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1905_Russian_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revolutions_and_rebell...

And which of these involved sanctions?

Note that the 1905 revolution in particular happened because of a lost war. So it reiterates my main point: the goal should be to defeat Russia militarily in Ukraine, because that's the only thing that will save the latter.

A problem with authoritarian regimes is that their people can't opt out of violence. Instead, in this instance, it's other nation's citizens made to pay while Russians suffer relatively minor financial crises for the acts of a government they are usually supportive of. If it's hard to stand up now, it would have been easier before they allowed the extension of term limits or assassinations in other countries. Every Western democracy owes itself to someone, at the least indirectly to French revolutionaries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011%E2%80%932013_Russian_prot...

If they didn't care about the operation of the economy they wouldn't care about oil

I understand namecheap's decision because they have coworkers in Ukraine.

However, unless you apply that same logic to the US, UK, and a host of other nations, you are being hypocritical. They have murdered so many civilians, including kids, that surely they deserve the same punishment.

Yet we both know we're not about to see that, and I think we know why.

Your blatant whataboutism aside, I do agree that the world would likely be a much better place if companies applied morals like this across the board.

I'm happy to hear that and glad we're on the same page.

It is whataboutism, and I do it because I come from a place where people have been subjugated for decades, and if you protest that, you're called an antisemite. (Yes there is actual antisemitism too--I'm talking about legitimate protest of actions).

Calling out people who suddenly have a moral compass is something I'm obligated to do. It might help next time that moral compass is needed.

That same logic does apply. Private indivuduals of ISIS would not have sold services to the US, or vice versa, or for any other war in a century.

Yeah, but this is HN. A weirdly libertarian group full of COVID deniers, people who think that it originated in a Wuhan lab, and those who care more about privacy than _literally anything else_

HN people are not normal. I generally ignore it on things like this, seems like the crazies come out in force.

This site really does largely veer between Republican and Libertarian depending on the topic, anything involving COVID, 'cancel culture' or 'woke'-ness is a shitshow of ideological talking points that I don't remember being prevalent when I first started reading four or so years ago. It used to have a noticeable techno-libertarianism bent for sure, but you could still discuss the nuances of an issue.

It's worse than Slashdot was at its peak in the early 2000s when it was absolutely full of libertarians and anarcho-capitalists.

HN people feel the most normal to me of any online group.

All other social media sites feel extremely progressive with no room for nuance.

This is really wrong. I'm a Russian national, and I'm not supporting aggression towards Ukraine. In contrast, I've spent last two days in police after being detained due to the fact that I dared to express my condemnation in public protest.

I am not my government, and apart from starting a one-man revolution with a pretty obvious result, I'm doing everything I can to raise awareness, condemn actions of Russian government, and put an end to this. I've been doing so since 2011, back when I was a college student.

Namecheap -- this is a low move. While I do understand that your company has a lot of Ukrainian employees, all of which are in grave danger, you're not doing anyone a favor by making a shitty life of most Russian nationals even shittier.

> your company has a lot of Ukrainian employees

That raises a question: how to find a domain registar without a lot of Ukrainian employees ?

According to the recent leak, Epik has them a lot as well.

Could we crowdsource such a list of registrars sorted by nationality of their employees to be prepared to the geo risks?

It is really hard to me to answer this. I was able to find a private Russian-based registar, which at least on the surface has no ties to the government or government-controlled entities and works with ICANN directly.

Other people are trying to move to Cloudflare -- but my banking cards are already not working, and I can't pay in USD for their services. Plus to that, even if somebody manages to move to Cloudflare or GoDaddy, there's no guarantee that they won't pull the plug as well.

>Could we crowdsource such a list of registrars sorted by nationality of their employees to be prepared to the geo risks?

People here are suggesting nic.ru, which I presume would have a pretty low risk of getting kicked off.

One of my websites is blocked by Roskomnadzor, so I'd prefer an offshore registrar :(

Consider njal.la.

njal.la. Sign up via tor, pay with crypto. They'll never know where you're from, nor do they want to.

Ooo very nifty. Thank you.

Regardless of your intentions, your list idea would be used for racist discrimination.

You might consider a list of registrars that do stuff you disagree with instead.

No, it's about protecting against racist discrimination.

I would prefer to work with companies where different nationalities are represented.

90%+ of employees in one country (be it Ukraine, Russia, USA or China) is a geo-risk for clients.

And mind you, Namecheap doesn't ban clients based on their agreement or disagreement with something. It bans pro-Ukrainian dissidents in Russia too.

Racism culture thrives in mono-ethnic companies and this Namecheap case is a good example

The best approach is probably to have multiple domains from multiple registrars and registries for your website.

All of this also applies to the sanctions making the ruble and Russian stock market crumble. It's a piece of a larger whole.

Keep explaining to the Russian person why these actions impacting their life are good.

Since no one said it, many thanks for your courage and actions opposing Putin!

Let me prefix this by saying I'm not Russian, I have no ties to Russia whatsoever and I strongly oppose Putin's actions in Ukraine.

That said, I wonder about the legal ramifications of this move. Namecheap is essentially unilaterally terminating a (probably yearly) contract without the other party being at fault per se. There's no legal cause.

Will they be refunding the customers they are kicking out? Or will they be keeping the money for services not rendered?

Additionally, giving people only 4 working days to move out, especially in a situation as volatile as this, seems like a bad move. Anyone hosting their life on one of the domains affected (whether they are actually in Russia or mistakenly flagged as it seems happens a lot going by this thread) might not read the message in time. They might be in hospital, jail, without internet or otherwise unable to transfer in the very short time allotted. Again, not just the people Namecheap hopes to target, but also all the people they mistakenly flagged.

(And you can bet some disgruntled Russian customer will flood the support system with whitelist requests for all .ru domains currently pointing at Namecheap NS, overloading the support system for the remaining 4 working days until the deadline)

I understand that the Namecheap CEO and many of his employees are probably having a strong emotional reaction to the current war in Ukraine which is completely understandable. I fear this will not accomplish what they really desire though. And I don't think I'll be cheering them on.

> Will they be refunding the customers they are kicking out? Or will they be keeping the money for services not rendered?

Namecheap support staff is happy process your request of a refund for the service. Unfortunately, processing the refund may take a while, because the said support staff is hiding in a metro tunnel or dead.

In a vacuum, yes. But the bar has been raised a bit by having one country threaten to annihilate the world as we know it, and is presently at war with the country that hosts the workforce of the suppliers. In the past trading with the enemy would get you put up against a wall, this is a very logical and understandable step.

> Namecheap is essentially unilaterally terminating a (probably yearly) contract

Russians are essentially terminating Ukrainians citizens

What a horrifying policy. This may be tone-deaf as Namecheap has many Ukrainian employees, but this policy is antithetical to customer needs in an infrastructure company.

The US has a history entering conflicts i fervently disagree with. Wars and smaller, more targeted attacks. The idea that my business's production infrastructure could be at risk because some POTUS drone strikes the wrong wedding is exactly the sort of reactionary policy-making i try to avoid when choosing which companies i associate with my production infrastructure. This general neutrality was a reason i became a Namecheap customer many years ago.

I won't say that i can empathize at all with those deeply affected by this war. I fully understand people want to use the means at their control to change the tide here. But as a customer, this move scares me.

Completely agree.

Received the same email. I'm based in Lithuania and I have a Russian first name. No Russian addresses, IPs, billing info etc (because I have never been there!). How do you even select people to target with this? It's past midnight, I'm trying to figure out my options here. How exactly do the Euros I pay you from EU contribute to the Russian aggression?

Ah, this is probably the same fiasco as with Slack three years ago.

Stale and incorrect GeoIP data.

"Look, 5 years ago you accessed our services from an IP address which is now points to Russia! By MaxMind GeoIP lite Database!"

Last time I bothered to fix some data with them it took two months to even has a response.

> It's past midnight, I'm trying to figure out my options here

Obviously you need to contact support and hope what some of 1700 Ukranian support workers wouldn't mistake you for "Russian occupant" solely by the name.

If they're willing to terminate service for political reasons in this case, who's to say they won't do it in the future for other political reasons? Here begins the slippery slope of Namecheap terminating service to those it deems "wrong".

Been a happy, confident Namecheap user for a long time. Now I'm not so confident.

This is a terrible attempt at slippery slope argumentation. Launching a major land war while pursuing nuclear escalation is a solid cliff above cancel culture.

Are they cancelling service for the government, or individuals who happen to live in Russia?

> individuals who happen to live in Russia?

I am highly sympathetic to the plight of civilians under Putin. Good people in a bad place.

But come on. Crimea was annexed almost a decade ago. The troop build-up was broadcast for months. For several days, international airlines were flying. Unlike in Ukraine, nobody is subjecting Russia’s people to mortal peril. But there is a bare minimum level of culpability that comes with nationality. Being told, with advance notice, that you need to move your domains amply clears that threshold.

> culpability that comes with nationality

I thought we were over this 80 years ago

> I thought we were over this 80 years ago

We don't hold ordinary citizens accountable for the crimes of their country. Putin invading Ukraine doesn't justify dropping bombs on Russian homes.

But culpability? For resident nationals? Unless you were a dissident or in the opposition, yes, you absolutely bear culpability. I wouldn't even go so far as to say in a moral sense. Not automatically. But at least to one's ability to interact with other countries' economies.

> But culpability? For resident nationals? Unless you were a dissident or in the opposition, yes, you absolutely bear culpability. I wouldn't even go so far as to say in a moral sense. Not automatically. But at least to one's ability to interact with other countries' economies.

Maybe you are right. But holding ordinary citizens accountable doesn't always work the way we want. That's exactly what the West did with Germans after World War 1.

It depends on what you mean by "holding accountable"

Germany was financially crippled and mostly demilitarized after WW1 which of course hugely affected the population. But in terms of _actually_ holding people personally accountable, there was a much stronger and organized effort after WW2, see e.g. [0]. I think that worked out rather okay. So I don't think it's quite as simple as saying it doesn't work.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification

Our Russian contractor has been attempting to emigrate for most of his life, and he has a leg up on the rest of the people in the country because he lives in a border town and his family is historically from Poland. That he has not succeeded should maybe tell us something about how easy this sort of thing is.

Also, if you are a U.S. citizen and you would not like to support the droning of weddings and the indefinite detention and torture of taxicab drivers at Guantanamo Bay, you need to pay $150,000 or so to Saint Kitts or some similar country to buy a citizenship so that you can end your relationship with the IRS.

(I am residing in Russia, anti-war, anti-regime and don't have any domains with Namecheap)

Launching a major land war: let's take the Iraq operation for instance. Did any private company cut ties with its US customers over that? I really doubt it. Could an ordinary US citizen realistically do something to prevent the Iraq war? I really doubt it. Have the Iraq war lead to anything good? I don't think so. Death, destruction and ISIS.

The U.S. killed like 2 million civilians on the Korean peninsula and Japan slaughtered about 200,000 civilians in a major city in China. U.S. and Japanese subscribers to this service should watch out. I should be especially concerned, as a U.S. subscriber living in Japan.

I mean... I would be OK if namecheap decides to terminate the service for other countries that threat the world with nuclear bombs. I think that's a whole different level.

But countries that constantly drop non-nuclear bombs on other countries and murder civilians and children are still cool, right? USA only averages 46 strikes per day for the past 20 years. So maybe the cutoff is at 50.

Majority of employees being Ukrainian seems to be a major factor here. Maybe if they were based in Iraq they would have cut off the USA then too.

This isn't just about them. This is happening to Russians with nearly every western based service. There are Russians stuck in the EU because their credit card company blacklisted them. Where was this energy when the US was taking a flamethrower to the entire Middle East region? Really eye opening and I'll never forget this.

Yeah it's not all about them but you can bet the employees were wanting as big a reaction as the company could give after they are being invaded. Can't expect fully measured responses, in the end this is a relatively little disruption compared to what they're going through

>Where was this energy when the US was taking a flamethrower to the entire Middle East region?

It was missing because it wasn't a relatively civilized country where people who look like them are dying.

https://leftypol.org/leftypol/src/1645920148117.mp4

> Where was this energy when the US was taking a flamethrower to the entire Middle East region?

Muted for two reasons:

(1) racism, as many people have noted, but also

(2) the fact that the regimes the US was taking a flamethrower to in the middle east were ones that the international community would have acted against previously for war crimes, etc., even despite racial bias against the targets, but for superpowers standing in the way (notably, in the case of Saddam’s Iraq, the United States itself.)

We can't change the past.

I would not be ok with that. Threats of nuclear war should be resolved at the negotiating table. Random private companies voluntarily retaliating only risks making the situation more delicate.

Oh no! Will somebody please think of the domains?!

Literally everyone is willing to terminate services for political reasons given the right reasons for their politics. If Russia was invading a city where you or your coworkers were working and your employer decided to stop doing business with them, I think you might be more forgiving

Putin going Hitler doesn't seem like a slippery slope, it's surprising they're even able to legally continue business relationships with Russian customers at this point.

If Australia invades New Zealand I am happy for them to cut me off.

The problem with the slippery slope fallacy is that it goes both ways. If they're not able to suspend service during a war of conquest on the home of their employees, when can they?

I see you've discovered moral relativism.

Personally I'd hope that anyone that gets their offices bombed by another nation would stop and think critically about how much they want to support the people trying to literally kill them.

Profit isn't everything.

Oh you actually typed the phrase slippery slope too. You're going all in.

For context, it looks like Namecheap has about 1700 team members in Ukraine, if I'm reading this right.

https://www.namecheap.com/careers/ukraine/

One of the offices is Kharkiv which the Russians shelled with cluster bombs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/28/kharkiv-rock...

Sounds like it happened today - and the date/time on the article above is this evening:

https://twitter.com/_vsv_/status/1498458616155852805

Simply an American, and I’ll be moving my dozen domains off of Namecheap.

Attacking random Russians for something you don’t like of their leader is as dumb as post-9/11 Sikh bashing or interning German/Italian/Japanese after Pearl Harbor and the war declaration.

Way to make a shit situation worse.

It's a sanction. Meant to cause contention within their society to promote regime change. Think of it as tough love.

As an American I neither believe in such group punishment no any “guilty for sins of the father.”

If you live in your father’s home while he is murdering your neighbors for their land, you do have a responsibility to stop him or share in his fate.

I was born in Russia but I live in the UK. I don’t give a shit about Russian regime nor support the war. For what reason I got punished for being Russian citizen? How’s that different from nazis blaming Jewish for being Jewish?

It is not different, it’s exactly the same situation. The hypocrisy of lots of the comments here is insane.

Just to be clear: so are you taking responsibility for all the innocent people your country has killed throughout its existence?

Here's my thoughts: Just because you are tricked into voting fake elections with puppets on both sides, the dirty business your elites do in poor parts of the world to make themselves richer is not your responsibility.

If you look at what both Europe and Ukraine is doing right now with sanctions, they're being a bit more clever.

- You want to turn Russians against Putin, yes. But you don't want to have those same people hate Ukraine/US.

- For example, sanctioning a hospital or stopping sales of food or medical supplies into Russia would be a stupid sanction. Forbidding oligarchs from living luxury lives in Europe is a good one.

- Right now, most sanctions are focused on the wealthy and influential Russians, since those are the ones that have any sway.

- My guess is that the vast majority of Namecheap customer's are exactly the ones that will protest against Putin, or organize information campaigns aginst him.

- Obviously sanctioning Kasparov or Navalny would be the dumbest move. This is sort of in that same category.

It seems it would be completely logical to also boycott the European countries that are actively funding the Russian government with the billions of dollars that are given directly to the state, through the state owned Russian gas companies. If I'm reading this right, ~582bn~ 7bn USD (thanks Jabbles!) for just a few month last year: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/13/gazprom-hits-r...

I think it makes sense that the European people should also feel the immediate pressure for actively funding the war for the foreseeable future. They're an absolutely massive income stream, and should be part of the collateral, especially since they've been warned about this for decades now.

I would be interested in seeing a counter argument to this.

You are not reading that right: 582bn rubles, probably $7B before the recent crash.

As an American, this affirms Namecheap as my first choice.

I would do everything in my power to isolate and fight against a country engaging in a war of conquest in the modern era. For me it would not be a choice.

You do realize we’ve toppled more unfavorable to us regimes than anyone in the past ~120 or so years, right? The real difference is that no one can really pull the rug out from under us, but that’s changing because we’ve offshored so much, hoping that if anything our world beating military would intervene.

Russia has attacked over 1000 of namecheap’s employees.

I am a Russian citizen from birth who permanently lives and works in the UK. I do not support Russian regime in any way and offered my help with relocation to Russian and Ukrainian citizens from the start - see my post in LinkedIn. On namecheap I hold non-ru related domain paid till February 2023.

So what the heck they are blaming me for being Russian and terminating the contract without any agreement?

Same here.

You should email their support. I don't think they actually want to terminate your particular account, I think they only want to target people and companies who are actually in Russia (so they looked for Russian addresses and payment methods on file).

Their communication on this issue was terrible in many ways, but honestly I can't blame a company who's literally being shelled today for missing the mark once.

> so they looked for Russian addresses and payment methods on file

That’s wrong as both statements are false for me. They just simply queried the citizenship field on registration, I assume.

I’ve already contacted to their support, but meanwhile I am looking for the provider who respects my privacy as well as doesn’t give a shit about the nationality, skin color, religion etc.

And even if I lived in Russia, why would the private company would terminate the contract? Just because they wanted to? They just ruined their reputation and I wonder if it is a matter of discrimination and a reason for the lawsuit?

Because they don't want to deal with people who are paying for the bombs falling on them, even if it's not those people's fault. They're a private company so they get to make such decisions. You can always go to some faceless IPO-d megacorp that doesn't care about anything except profits.

You have made three statements and not a single one express any sympathy with their situation. Only your own victimhood and one blanket statement you don't support the government. Their employees are being shelled with cluster bombs by your government as we speak.

I think it is time you face reality that the world is going to start to hold the Russian people accountable for their governments actions. I feel sympathy with the Russian people since many don't support this war or even their government but at some point they are going to have to get uncomfortable and take risks and stand up to the government.

From the day 1 I publicly made a statement on my Fb and LinkedIn and offered relocation help for Russian and Ukrainian people. And as I’ve said earlier, I don’t live in Russia, I don’t support “my” government and their actions.

There are thousands of Russians who got into jail for the protests.

How dare you blame people just because of the place they were born?

This whole situation is a tragedy. I don't know your life story and base my comments on the tone of your replies in this thread.

The world is going to hold the Russian population accountable to some degree for the war their government have started whether you think this is fair or not. And I think your attitude of aggression, victimhood and being wronged is not going to help you in the coming years. You would probably be better served with some humility, empathy and feel of responsibility even if you think it is unjust. The real victims are the Ukrainian civilians being bombed by your government at the moment. Not inconvenienced Russians who feel they are unjustly punished.

You don't know my life story but you accused me for supporting the war; you don't know all Russians, but labelled all the people just by nationality. How different are you from nazis blaming Jewish for being Jewish?

Just simple test: I have 3-5 reachouts every day for relocation help from Ukraine and Russia. I will say them: "Hey, danols from HN told me that I'm russian therefore I should support the war. please contact to him". Are you ready to take responsibility for them and help them all?

-----

UPD: I wrote this in emotions, I'm sorry. But I'm truly offended by your accusation

This will be my last reply. I am not accusing you personally for what is happening. I empathies with your situation and feel sorry for you. You are obviously doing what you can at the moment. What I was trying to convey was that the tone of your replies came of as pretty aggressive with a sense of injustice and victimhood. Which considering the situation didn't sit well with me.

My replies also comes from emotions and anger. It is probably unfair but being Russian I think you are going to have to find ways of dealing with these emotions from other people even if you feel it is unjust. Expressing empathy and humility would probably be helpful. Especially during the current time when bombs are still falling. I didn't get that feeling from you and therefore reacted the way I did, which was probably unnecessary. I wish you the best in dealing with this situation and hope that you are able to help Russia become a free & open society.

Why is he responsible for a country he doesn't live in? He didn't choose to be born there and he even left. Cut this guy some slack.

I'm not even Russian and they sent this email to me. Maybe we can organize a class action, anyway they lost their reputation, I can't waste other time with and for them

> So what the heck they are blaming me for being Russian and terminating the contract without any agreement?

This is how economic sanctions work. You hit the nation economically to put pressure on the politicians. In any case people are at least in part responsible for their governments. If you have an issue with it, join protests against Putin, do things to stop him from committing murder and war crimes. In the meantime, the sanctions here are not your fault, nor are they Namecheaps - they are Putin's fault.

For the record, it is not a sanction, it's a choice for the private company. And I don't have an issue with it at all, I know that I will never use their services ever again, as they ruined their reputation in one day.

So let's say it was WW2 and it was a Jewish company refusing to provide a service to Germans in Germany. You would never use their service again? You'd blame the Jews?

Don't try to diverge my words. Here's an American company refusing to provide a service to Russians outside of Russia. I blame American company for their decision.

The right analogy with WW2 is Australian company refusing to provide a service to Germans living in America. WTF?

It's a Ukrainian company, even though they are registered in multiple nations. 95% of the employees are in Ukraine. They (their actual city and homes) are being bombed by Russia and Russians. Even if they had 5% of their company in Ukraine, it's reasonable to not provide service to companies that enrich the people bombing their employees.

I agree that they don’t want to have relationships with the aggressors and totally accept this. But you should admit it is done by Russian government and I as Russian citizen with residency in the UK have nothing with it. I didn’t choose to be born in Russia and I left Russia almost three years ago.

Wow, what a way to treat your customers...

In general I think punishing mostly innocent individuals for a decision made by their government is a terrible way to proceed. Furthermore with the 1-week notice you're literally urging people to get off your own platform. I don't condone the Russian-Ukraine war, but just because you take a political stand -- legitimate or not -- doesn't mean it's fair to put undue pressure on .ru domain owners just because those TLDs happen to be Russian (are they even reimbursed?).

I'm not picking any sides here but I won't use Namecheap if I know it can deny me service on a whim just because the government of the country I have registered my domain name in has gone to war with another country. War is force majeure but Namecheap really didn't have to do this: it makes them an unreliable provider in regard to the current world's political instability.

As far as I can tell, Namecheap's support team (which has always been excellent) is mostly based in Ukraine. And I understand how difficult it must be to find a way to reconcile this with the fact that Namecheap has customers in Russia. Which is further complicated by the fact that some of the Russian users actively oppose Putin's regime and depend on Namecheap as a company.

And, of course, I do realize that whatever's going on with Russian customers is in no way comparable to the suffering that the Ukrainian members of the customer support team live through every day as the war goes on.

This is a very hard situation, and I hope Namecheap finds some way to resolve it (hopefully a better one that they've found for now).

> This is a very hard situation, and I hope Namecheap finds some way to resolve it

I hope Russia will find a way to resolve it, that is the root cause. And if Russia continues with this war, have you considered that Namecheap in its current form might not even exist anymore?

Received the same.

Such a shitty move.

Moving some left over from them to nic.ru

Why not ban every single US and NATO country users for the slaughter of many countries including but not limited to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Libya... because of the actions of their government?

Fuck this mentality that makes the life of ordinary people harder and call it "sympathy".

But there is no one they know in those countries, so it's like they do not exist.

This is just a PR move from them, let's see how many of these companies will follow in coming days.

If an Iraqi company wanted to stop doing business with US clients during the Iraq war, they'd come across as reasonable.

100% agreed. But in that case, it's better to say that such is the reason.

Namecheap is an American company.

It would be closer to a Mongolian company decides to stop doing business with US clients because of the Iraq War.

But they employ 75% of their employees in Ukraine. For all intents and purposes they are Ukrainian in this situation, and the CEO probably has a lot of empathy for what their employees and families are going through.

> Fuck this mentality that makes the life of ordinary people harder and call it "sympathy".

The sanctions will do this too. They will make Russians very poor, it might take time -- but odds are ordinary Russians will become poor.

That's sad, but what is the alternative?

> Why not ban every single US and NATO country users for the slaughter of many countries including but not limited to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Libya... because of the actions of their government?

I guess there are certain benefits when you are the only superpower in a uni-polar world.

I'm no fan of Putin or the Russian government's war, but I originally moved to Namecheap from GoDaddy over GoDaddy's support for SOPA. I want my registrar to be a registrar, not a political entity. Looks like I'll be looking for a new registrar to do business with going forward.

The Russian government are the bad guys here - people who happen to be in Russia are not. I'm not gonna do business with a company that gutpunches uninvolved individuals for political points.

> I want my registrar to be a registrar, not a political entity.

Corporations are creation of states through law, and thereby inherently political entities; further, they are mechanisms of the sponsoring stakeholders —ultimately, even if indirectly, flesh and blood human beings (stockholders in the typical capitalist business enterprise) to pursue their interests, which may usually be predominantly profit for business entities, but are rarely exclusively that, when the chips are down.

The Russian government does not exist in a bubble, it can only function with the functioning of the Russian economy. Russian individuals are gutpunched by every sanction, the families of Russian soldiers by every death.

If you don't want consequences for your citizens, don't go to war to enact consequences on other countries' citizens.

> for political points.

I do not think you understand the true motivation

> If you don't want consequences for your citizens, don't go to war to enact consequences on other countries' citizens.

This kind of reasoning is derived from a representative democracy where the citizens elect a government to look after their best interests. Consequently, the government's ability to stay in power depends on public consensus and approval.

By most indications, Russia seems to be ... not that.

Can we stop painting Russia as a nation of poor proles being subjugated by a disparate government? On the whole, Russian people are very much in favour of their leader & largely ignored the erosion of protections like term limits for the short term that it benefited them. To turn around once the consequences are on their shoulders and say that this was unforeseeable is nonsense.

If you want a nation that is subjugated by Russia's government & experiences the consequences, there is a much better option.

Setting fires under people in the hopes that they rise against their government that would not have much trouble quashing such an uprising doesn't make much sense beyond fulfilling power fantasies some people get off on. Sanctions are really good at starving a populace, but not particularly good at achieving a change in power structure.

Russian government systematically shuts down free press, murders or imprisons leaders of oppositions and rigs elections.

The last elections to the Russian parlament were obviously rigged, and yet international community recognized them as valid. Russian opposition is fighting an uphill war with government for literally decades without any help from the other countries. Hundreds to thousdands of people are detained every day for protesting against the war.

Yes, support ratings for Putin are quite high — because there’s no free media and everyone trying to spread truth is promptly dealt with.

Nobody cared when Russia ignored the decision of ECHR to free Navalny. Nobody cared when Nemtsov was murdered. This situation is not new, it’s the result of the decades-long policy of “let Putin get away with any crimes against his country and international law as long as we get oil and gas”.

This is the first European conflict of the internet era where one side gets economically isolated in a very radical way. A lot of theories about modern economic warfare and its effects, are being tested in the real world - stuff like "Country X cannot wage war because the economic blowback would destroy them". I expect the Chinese are watching it attentively, to name one interested party (eh).

If this strategy works, we might have secured the century for good. If it doesn't, it will feel like the clock has gone back 100 years - and those weren't nice times to be around.

> "Country X cannot wage war because the economic blowback would destroy them"

Note that a common corollary to that is that countries cannot afford to impose sanctions on others because the economic blowback would destroy them (even sanctions against "smaller" countries, due to how global liquidity works). This is more readily acknowledged by academics, and essentially cancels out the whole theory; but for some reason didn't make it into the trickled-down-for-the-masses version.

If Western leaders apply strong sanctions, it's quite likely we'd go back around 90 years, so you won't be far off!

Sanctions have worked so wonderfully well against Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Russia, and North Korea …

And this one is so “important” they’re not even willing to cut the gas pipe that runs through the war zone.

> essentially cancels out the whole theory

Ish. As a country, when you have 30 economic partners, losing one is not the end of the world; whereas losing 25 of them definitely hurts. Obviously that's more difficult the bigger the partner is (e.g. from an European perspective, sanctioning the US would have a much bigger impact than sactioning Russia), so really it's a question of size and proportion more than anything.

This is a ridiculous position to take and will lead to both needless pain and suffering (average Russian citizens have quite a lot to deal with, not the least of which being their devalued currency) and direct harm to actors inside and outside Russia using this infrastructure for critical communications.

It's not at all a stretch to imagine that some of this infrastructure is being used to provide political and social support to Ukrainian positions and/or to assail Russian positions. Some of that support most certainly comes from within Russia.

Namecheap is not a gaming site: you chose to run infrastructure and when you run infrastructure you must run it as if lives depend on it. There is no way you can know what chains of dependency and support rely on you and there is no way you can know if the eventual beneficiaries of those chains are good or bad actors.

If you see an account behaving badly, remove it without collateral damage.

Otherwise, keep the lights on and keep doing your boring job.

Yes, keep the lights on keep doing your boring job while the Russia army is bombing around some of your offices ...

IMHO, when the collateral damage is that some of your employees are sleeping in metro tunnels and some of their neighbours are dead because of the bombs falling on their cities, cutting off customers from the country invading them is very very justified.

I'm not in Russia and I don't really care about this war (sorry, just being honest!) but this isn't the kind of internet I want, where companies show their virtue by taking political positions and removing service from their customers (looking at you AWS). The domain and e-mail service that I paid money for shouldn't be contingent on my government behaving and continuing to behave in a manor that Namecheap approves of.

> If you hold any top-level domains with us, we ask that you transfer them to another provider by March 6, 2022.

I'll be transferring them this evening, GFY.

It was a decision more motivated by the sanctions than human right of war crime.

The email and CEO's explanations say otherwise.

>but this isn't the kind of internet I want

we're not living in some 90s California cypherpunk fantasy any more. The internet is as real of a domain of warfare as any physical one and just like planes are being grounded, pipelines are being turned off you can be sure cyberspace isn't going to be treated any differently.

When Russia and NATO/Europe enter a conflict not caring isn't going to be an option.

So leave that type of warfare to the warring governments. We don't need fractured delivery of every service in accordance with every service provider's politics in relation to current events.

> When Russia and NATO/Europe enter a conflict not caring isn't going to be an option.

I agree, at that point it's WW3. Just what we need, an absolute disaster.

>So leave that type of warfare to the warring governments. We don't need fractured delivery of every service in accordance with every service provider's politics in relation to current events

Why shouldn't Namecheap (or me or anyone else) take a position on the current situation?

This is going to hurt Namecheap. Almost certainly more than it will hurt the Russian government, and likely more than it will hurt Namecheap's Russian customers.

This appears to be Namecheap standing up for their employees (~1700 in Ukraine, IIUC) and taking a moral/ethical stand against the violence, destruction and murder going on right now in Ukraine.

Regardless of which side (or none, for that matter) of this you support, why shouldn't Namecheap (or anyone else) express their position and take action in support of that position?

Take a position, fine. Talk about it, have a big block on top of every page letting everyone know how you feel, donate, etc., I have no problem with any of these.

I also think it's for acceptable for them to choose not to renew someone's agreement based on some political stance (obnoxious but within their rights). But if we signed a contract and I paid you to register my domain name or host my e-mail, you can't just take it away from me mid-contract because you're upset about something that somebody else did. There are people downstream from me that rely on that domain or that e-mail hosting service, it's not up to you to take that away from them because you're tangentially involved in one hop.

> This is going to hurt Namecheap.

Lost me as a customer.

>Take a position, fine. Talk about it, have a big block on top of every page letting everyone know how you feel, donate, etc., I have no problem with any of these.

Absolutely. And Namecheap has done so and more. And so have you. Good for you. And good for Namecheap.

I frequently disagree with decisions my local, state and national governments, as well as corporations make. And I speak up about it too.

I withhold my money/business from corporations with whose decisions I disagree. And I vote for the folks who support the policies I support too.

I suspect that you do the same. And as I said, good for you!

Why shouldn't Namecheap have the same opportunity?

They should, that was literally the gist of my reply. But they shouldn't take away a service that has already been paid for, the disappearance of which has critical ramifications for the customer, in the midst of providing the service that they agreed to provide and already got paid for.

Are you suggesting people just be able to walk away from contracts whenever they'd like to, as long as they give lip service to a principled position as an explanation?

>Are you suggesting people just be able to walk away from contracts whenever they'd like to, as long as they give lip service to a principled position as an explanation?

Nope. Nor am I suggesting that claims for breach of contract should be ignored by the courts.

Should Namecheap issue refunds to customers they are cancelling? Probably. Will they do so? I have no idea.

We're all responsible for our own actions. Whether or not those actions result in positive or negative outcomes.

I imagine that some (former) customers will file lawsuits. They might even win.

As I said in my initial comment[0]:

   This is going to hurt Namecheap. Almost certainly 
   more than it will hurt the Russian government, 
   and likely more than it will hurt Namecheap's 
   Russian customers.

Namecheap has taken a course of action that, at a minimum, shows strong support for their employees, with significant financial (both lost revenue and lawsuits) risk to the company.

Whether that's right or wrong, that's how Namecheap has decided to proceed. As I said, this is going to hurt Namecheap financially.

Whether or not their actions are effective in reining in Russia's aggression is an open question (although it will likely have no effect). That said, Namecheap doing what they think is the right thing.

And Namecheap will be held responsible (in a variety of ways) for those decisions.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30507460

> but this isn't the kind of internet I want, where companies show their virtue by taking political positions and removing service from their customers

Which virtue? Justice? Rage? They have 1700 Ukrainian employees, some in cities under siege right now.

They are at war and Russia is their enemy.

Great, now amid looking for ways to get my family out I also have to find another registrar who will not do the same thing and transfer my domains so that my cloud and email are still working.

Any politically neutral registrars that HN crowd can recommend?

Gandi are no bullshit. Ask them.

Namecheap used to be that way. They put out a blog post last year about how they support free speech.

https://www.namecheap.com/blog/internet-freedom-the-state-of...

Good find. Total hypocrites. We need a permanent archive of corporate hypocrisy somewhere, then we need a wallet that checks it before letting you pay. That will sort the bastards out.

I don't know if it's still true nowadays but Gandi was started by a group of hackers / Internet libertarians who were involved (as defenders) in the very first cases of Internet censorship in France.

So hopefully they have kept that spirit and don't do any of that bullshit.

It's time to decentralize.

https://ens.domains https://ipfs.io/

njal.la. Sign up via tor, pay with crypto. They'll never know where you're from, nor do they want to.

If a politically neutral registrar is one without employees in a location that has been threatened with 'never-before-seen consequences' - I'm stumped.

Every Russian citizen and every Russian company that is currently relying on businesses in the West such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and so on should expect those services to be cut off at some point in the near future.

Regardless, you won't be able to pay for these services so it will be terminated one way or another.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30508314

(which was flagged, unfortunately).

While I'm not from Russia, I guess I have to move domains to the registrar in my country. It's just not safe to do any business abroad, when I can't go to the court in case of anything happens and all my property could be seized if someone wouldn't like actions of my government.

I think it's pretty ironic, considering that that's probably the one thing domain owners in Russia wouldn't want - the Russian government being able to seize the domain.

Yep, Russian citizens seem to be between hammer and anvil. I'm personally not afraid of government seizing my domain as it's just personal mail and I'm nobody important. But for something more controversial like opposition website that might be hard indeed.

> I'm personally not afraid of government [...] I'm nobody important

Yeah, it always starts like that until somebody doesn't like your nose, religion or whatever.

Exactly. This is helping Putin build his own "national Internet" that they've been talking about for so long. And the more successful he is at that, the more isolated Russians will be from world news, and the more exposed to Russian propaganda (which is already hysterical).

Doesn't the Russian government control the .ru TLD? Can't they just seize it regardless?

I have a .net

Yeah, this is breeding more isolationism and distrust; now I have to take nationalistic concerns into account when choosing service providers, and wonder who else might pull a Namecheap in the future.

Here my two cents as someone that has visited, lived in, or good friends in authoritarian regimes such as East Germany, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Hong Kong:

- in a democracy, the population is responsible for what the government does. Conversely, the more authoritarian the regime, arguably the less culpable the population is. (Of course, people shouldn't have allowed an authoritarian figure to gain power... indeed. But frankly, those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.)

- it is imperative to distinguish between the government and the people, in particular in very authoritarian regimes. Sometimes the population is behind their government, sometimes they aren't.

- here, it seems to me that many Russians (and quite possibly the majority) are increasingly critical and sick of Putin, and, as far as I can tell, most are, like the rest of the world, against this war.

- who suffers most from this war are ordinary Ukrainians, obviously. However, I venture to say, most ordinary Russians suffer, too.

- thus, as far as possible, our sanctions should be laser focused at targeting Putin and his collaborators, the inner circle, government, and companies close to the government.

You highlight the difference well between a democracy and an authoritarian regime.

However the suggestion you make at the end, that we should only sanction Putin & co., is exactly the type of measure that would work in a democratic regime but not in an authoritarian one.

I can't think of a single case where a large authoritarian regime was handed off gently to a democratic one as a result of sanctions on the dictator.

Can you think of a case where sanctions have produced the desired effect of the regime change?

I live in Serbia which was under heavy sanctions in early 90s: those in power have only gotten richer and more powerful during the time. Only after economy started recovering in late 90s, and people could afford to worry about "freedom" instead of basic survival did people get enough democratic momentum to vote incumbents out (sprinkled with a bit of West-supported protests to avoid a possibly rigged second round with 47% votes for opposition to 32% for incumbents in the first round iirc).

But sanctions did nothing to hurt those in power. They did plenty to hurt the rest of us.

I suspect They also weaken the general military capability given economy generates the tax to pay the military. Not a perfect system of course.

I think the point is to make the populace angry enough that they assist in overthrowing the regime.

In oppressive regimes, fewer resources need to be put into building infrastructure and improving the human condition of its citizens when more and more of the country's income is generated by harvesting natural resources or via other tasks that mostly require unskilled labor. Democracies only really build infrastructure because their citizens need it to focus on generating economic growth via their own skilled labor, which often can't be done without roads, stable electricity, clean drinking/industrial water, etc.

In these situations, for republics like the United States, the best way to encourage the country to improve the standard of living for the citizens is via sanctions since it forces the country to sell these commodities at lower prices to a smaller group of potential buyers. If enough countries limit trade to where the country has to primarily rely on its own citizens for economic stability, they'd be further pressured into at least partially building schools and infrastructure and other things we/the United States believes should be a bare minimum for life.

In the case of Iran all the sanctions have done, was further embolster the hardliners in government. And since there is no carrot left to give the hardliners also get to say that any act of moderation clearly didn't work. I'd say society is at a breaking point but at what cost? It's unlikely that the country will ever go back to trading with the west, China and Russia now hold a firm grip on everything.

I wouldn't worry about "ever going back" to trading with the West: as they say, "money talks".

National animosity will remain and it will be a political tool that can be easily put to use, but as long as there's money to be gained to improve life for your local population, trades will start happening.

I have no problem making life harder for Russians, having them cancel their holiday in Turkey, wait in line a bit, move to a new VPN. Maybe that will make some realize that something is wrong with their entire government and they need to revolt and change that fast. This after Aleppo and the rest.

I think that the government of a country is a lagging metric of the value of its people.

I guess all the Putin supporters outside of Russia are very lucky to not have to move their domains off namecheap!

then my value as a person living in the US is net negative to the world ?

i say this as someone living in US borders and citizenship

Throughout most of history, and in pretty much every non-democratic country, people must die to change the government. You've seen what Putin does to dissidents and even to protestors. Most revolts require decades of fighting and huge numbers of lives lost.

It's pretty evil to expect a populace to do that. In fact it is scarily similar to the ideas within early soviet governments, that mass death now is worthwhile and acceptable to allow for a promised utopia later.

I just don't think human psychology works this way. Your attitude is akin to a parent's with a child, "your actions have consequences, so do better". But Russia's parent in this analogy is Putin, and he will use such things to his advantage. Your approach might feel just, but the message will be completely lost.

You will note how many Western governments over the past few days have been saying explicitly: "These sanctions are not meant at the Russian people, we see that they did not want this war". It doesn't seem like this is even true from polling, but it's calculated messaging, and it's important.

It’s just a desire for revenge. Whatever solutions this approach promises are imaginary.

You are using an analogy to a totally different domain (parent / child) where the rules of the game is totally different (in parent / child relationship, everything is controlled and non-escalatory: it's about education and the assumption is that there is no violence). In this frame of reference you might win the argument.

But my argument is different. If because of sanctions Russians people start to think a little bit and question their government, that will be a start. That may not happen to be honest because as I said, the government of a country is a reflexion of the values of that country. And I am not sure for Russia.

I have family in Moldova and in far-east Russia. I was talking to a cousin in the far-east and I can't even believe the discussion we had few weeks ago.

I'm not sure I agree.

This somehow reminds me of how Putin, in his ridiculous speeches, cited NATO involvement in Serbia and Iraq as a reason to attack Ukraine. Of course, the western politicians responsible for those decisions are now gone, because unlike Putin, they respected term limits.

The US hasn't had a perfect track record in the "wars of choice" department. The US voter does have some moral responsibility for it. The flaw, however, would be in saying as Putin does that the US political system is totally invalid for this, or justifies bad behavior elsewhere.

All the reporting from (non-kremlin) sources that I've seen say that Putin is quite popular with the average Russian: https://theconversation.com/putins-public-approval-is-soarin....

That's the sad thing about this. They don't know better, rural areas only have tv-propaganda.

Additionally, that report is from 23/02. I believe that opinion should have shifted quite a lot already.

What an arrogant, ignorant comment. Do you seriously think that all those people living different lifestyles to you, who don't live in cities, and believe different things, do so only out of ignorance? If you're an wealthy, urbanite westerner, do you realise that in terms of your belief system, lifestyle, and values, you are such an astonishing minority? What would all those people make of your beliefs? "All he has is his Fox News/CNN propaganda, he doesn't know any better".

TBH, from someone living among them (not Russia, but close), I can't say a single good thing about putler's supporters. This includes many of my own relatives. They have the same internet access we have, but prefer to eat up whatever TV is saying because it makes them comfortable. It's absolutely useless to argue with them or provide any facts, you'll just get nowhere. The propaganda proved to be remarkably effective.

I was brainwashed by Kremlin propaganda and believed in their holy mission until I was about 18 or so. Then I got a proper permanent internet connection and started looking up information from alternative sources. I could not in good conscience support what's been going on in the region since at least 2008.

Now we're basically fucked because of what's happening. Again, I am not from Russia, but our economy will be buried along with theirs because they're highly intertwined. And I'm pretty sure they'll invade us sooner or later.

If he's an American, he doesn't only have Fox News/CNN, he has his pick of any news outlet available to him (approximately all of them) while a Russian's media diet is literally regulated by the government (censorship online and on TV as well as violence against dissidents). What on earth are you talking about?

You're right: I realised that the Russians I know skew urban and young and are not representative; and Putin seems to have majority approval [1].

Still not sure that changes in attitude will come about by making life more miserable for ordinary Russians; and even if the majority disapproves of Putin, there is not much they can do about it [2].

[1] https://www.levada.ru/en/ratings/

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/world/europe/russia-ukrai...

> And yet there is desperately little that Russians can do to change their country’s trajectory.

1 - russian propaganda. we do not have an institution of social polls, at least real ones

Levada is probably the only one that paints a somewhat realistic picture. They've had their share of problems with the dictator's government because of that.

Whoever is responsible/culpable doesn't matter. Sanctions aren't about punishing the population, they're about inciting a change.

A happy population doesn't riot and revolt. You need a miserable population to get something like that to happen.

Do you have any prior evidence that sanctions have led to protests/riots that have successfully overthrown a regime?

Throughout history, revolutions only succeeded when there were enough privileged people on "their" side (eg. those with money, status...). I am not sure where the idea that sanctions work to this effect came from, but I have yet to see it: miserable population is scrambling to survive, not to fight ideological battles.

As an example, Serbia, where I am from, has been under heavy sanctions in early 90s: you'd be buying car fuel in 1.5l bottles smuggled from neighbouring countries, inflation was so bad that the day after paycheck, I'd be getting half of my parents salary for pocket money... Economy started recovering in late 90s after sanctions were abolished, and regime change happened in year 2000.

> Throughout history, revolutions only succeeded when there were enough privileged people on "their" side (eg. those with money, status...).

Counterpoint: what about the French revolution?

You are absolutely right that it's easier to have revolts led by the privileged - the American revolution was one. I'm sure there were plenty of others.

As for sanctions causing regime change, you may be right. But that's also not the goal here - the goal is to tank Russia's war effort and generally cause pain for him and his cronies. Of course plenty of people are probably hoping regime change will result but I doubt it'll be a direct consequence, if it happens at all.

> Counterpoint: what about the French revolution?

https://learnodo-newtonic.com/french-revolution-leaders seems to disagree: most, if not all, of them come from privileged backgrounds.

Interesting. Yeah, my knowledge of the French revolution is a bit limited. Thanks for the link.

This is total ignorance of western history. Even the French Revolution only succeeded because it pitted the incumbent nobility and high clergy against the very rich merchant class, who in spite of not being nobles by blood, ran all the factories and the French colonial settlements abroad. For source read the relevant books by the Durants, on both Rousseau and Napoleon.

Broad based sanctions assume, completely wrong, that Putin’s (or any dictator’s) power comes from the common Russian people. Wrong! And that’s why sanctions will only hurt the common Russians and keep Putin and his cronies in power for decades. In reality, he draws his power, like all other dictators, from an inner circle. These would be the oligarchs, heads of military and police and some others. This is where the sanctions should be targeted if the intention is to effectively change the regime. Hurting the population does not mean the pain will trickle up to the inner circle.

Sanctions aren't about regime change, I think.

Autoritarian regimes with a lot of money can do more damage than those with few. As witnessed this week.

Throughout the history, trade happened with partners. Western world made it seem like taking it away is a sanction instead of having it as a "gift to improve each others country".

This could be reversing because of Russia now.

"Do you have any prior evidence that sanctions have led to protests/riots that have successfully overthrown a regime?"

Yes, the Soviet Union.

I don't see any mention of economic sanctions at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Unio..., care to elaborate?

The 'Iron Curtain' was a giant set of sanctions. Limited mobility, trade, finances, goods, services, information.

I'll double down: the Soviet Union represented 'sanctions' considerably worse than exist today.

So much so, that there wasn't much trade to sanction.

We have integrated economies now, there's a lot to directly sanction, we didn't back then.

Where was IKEA, Toyota, Nike, Apple, Intel etc. and their 1970's peers doing in Russia?

They were not. There just wasn't brand commercial integration. Same thing for information, services, travel, finance etc..

We'd have to shut down most of our trade now to reach the level of de-facto 'sanction' of the Soviet Union.

People talk about the "overthrow" outcome a lot but overthrowing the regime is like the biggest outcome you can get, you don't have to overthrow the whole regime for sanctions to be effective. Regime leaders respond to economic threats like anyone else, it may not cause a revolution but if the threatened sanctions are sufficient, it affects their behavior.

Here's a topical example: Russia threatened Ukraine with sanctions if Ukraine signed a free trade deal with the EU [1] [2]. It effectively stalled free trade talks between Ukraine and the EU.

That happened in late 2013. In a twist of irony, this enraged ordinary Ukrainians and kicked off the Euromaidan protests that forcibly deposed Ukraine's president at the time - Viktor Yanukovych - and toppled his regime. This led to the annexation of Crimea and, well, the rest is history.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/ukraine-eu-russia/russia-ste...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-25401179

sanctions are always paid by citizens. EU countries closing their airspace to russian flights are hitting their own EU citizens getting stuck in Russia and having more troubles and increased expenses to get back to their home. So anyone starting to make sanctions hitting me, I'll consider him/her personally responsible

> arguably the less culpable the population is

This may be, but it begs the question: who is most responsible, then? Certainly not the people outside of Russia, yes? If the Americans invaded Russia, for the sole purpose of arresting Putin, this would result in worldwide, humanity ending nuclear devastation, including in Russia. It simply must be the Russian people that hold the most culpability for holding Putin to account then.

Is it fair? No, certainly not, but tell that to the Ukrainians being murdered by Russian people right now.

Putin is responsible, and the higher-ups.

But since Putin does have fairly high approval, the population is somewhat responsible too.

Yes of course, but Putin isn’t going to hold himself to account, so the question is, who is next in line to hold him to account.

From https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/28/world-war-... - targeted sanctions are not enough, because an autocratic leader can use his whole country as his bank account.

Reynolds: I gather you think that sanctions leveled by the government are inadequate to address this much larger threat?

Hill: Absolutely. Sanctions are not going to be enough. You need to have a major international response, where governments decide on their own accord that they can’t do business with Russia for a period of time until this is resolved. We need a temporary suspension of business activity with Russia. Just as we wouldn’t be having a full-blown diplomatic negotiation for anything but a ceasefire and withdrawal while Ukraine is still being actively invaded, so it’s the same thing with business. Right now you’re fueling the invasion of Ukraine. So what we need is a suspension of business activity with Russia until Moscow ceases hostilities and withdraws its troops.

Reynolds: So ordinary companies…

Hill: Ordinary companies should make a decision. This is the epitome of “ESG” that companies are saying is their priority right now — upholding standards of good Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance. Just like people didn’t want their money invested in South Africa during apartheid, do you really want to have your money invested in Russia during Russia’s brutal invasion and subjugation and carving up of Ukraine?

It's more nuanced than that. One should do business with people who are against the regime. If you stop doing business with them - those people will have to do anything to survive including being more dependent on regime's assistance, developing dependency and loosing even more of their free agency.

This is also why sanctions are targeted - you need a carrot and a stick.

Those are good points, but I don't quite agree because there's a few things to add to the list:

- Putin's popularity jumped up during the invasion to 69% - which is a lot.

- Only 5% of Russians believe that Russia is responsible for the incursion, while 50% believe that the problem is NATO (I understand at least part of this is due to heavy propaganda)

- While the choice for war is a bit ambiguous and probably errs one way or the other depending on how much propaganda buy in there is, the fact of the matter is that Russians will ultimately, proudly accept the annexation of Ukraine as their vassal state and buy into the notion of that broader destiny of Neo Russia that Putin is pushing for. The 'We Are One People' is enough to elicit the cultural chauvinism among the population so that while they may not support conflict, they will accept, and possibly promote the outcome without any regard for the self-determination of the Ukranians.

(Obviously, this is due to a lot of propaganda and lack of real exposure to other information, but it is what it is.)

- Chinese citizens are broadly happy to see the crackdowns in Hong Kong (i.e. "Why do those they believe they should have special rights, especially when they are attacking China!"), and fully accept the 'regional internment' of the Uyghurs, including re-education prisons for many specific individuals purely on the basis of their ethnicity. Similarly the eradication of Tibet as an entity. And of course, the possible invasion of Taiwan that we might see in the coming years.

There is a degree of complicity among the population, at least for the nationalist claims, especially to the extent they look past the materiality of some of the violence etc.

Second, is that the citizens probably need to be informed of the issue. While the sanctions might form a bit of a blip in the Ruble, it's not going to affect most people's lives particularly dramatically, it may just slow the economy down in largely imperceptible ways to the general population. Many will blame 'NATO' for their disinvitations to sporting events.

It's dramatic for a Western-connected software developer who has the means to get a flight, and who cares about Ruble/USD exchange, but not likely for most of the plebes.

Therefore - it might be a good idea to do 'populist sanctions' - like shutting down all the Starbucks, McDonald's, IKEAS, Netflix, Hollywood films, Nikes, NBA games, televised football of all kinds - all those things and more.

I'd say include iPhones/Android but probably we want to maintain for them an outlet for information from the outside, and frankly to collect data if we need it. But we could dramatically reduce what's available in the App Stores, stop selling a bunch of variations and product lines etc.

None of that is hugely material at all, it's not going to harm anyone frankly, it won't hugely affect the economy, but it's a 'really strong daily reminder' of the fact that 'they are excluded' from the system. No more 'nice lattes', because 'we don't like you right now'.

> While the sanctions might form a bit of a blip in the Ruble, it's not going to affect most people's lives particularly dramatically, it may just slow the economy down in largely imperceptible ways to the general population

Every Russian economist I'm reading is in mourning (you can see it in their faces) and is promising a severe commodity deficiency and high prices on consumer goods in the near future.

I think they expect something like the beginning of the 90s, but even more severe, close to zero outside help, and low chances for recovery.

All of my Russian friends have been in panic since the 24th. I am too, honestly, I have already lost 25% of my income (which was not very high even before) for not doing anything wrong and just being close to Russia.

(I support Ukraine and the Western response, but we'll be collateral damage nevertheless.)

I don't doubt a cohort of educated young Russians has an inkling, but the population overall, not so much.

It's the same everywhere though. A lot of people don't pay attention, are not literate.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30507142.

Anybody affected by this or not, at this point I’d really recommend moving your domains away ASAP from such unstable leadership anyway. Just read in the comments and see how this person seems to be taking such critical decisions at whims comment by comment. They seem to have simply lost the plot. Tomorrow it can simply be you at the receiving end unless you change your passport to where this company is based (not sure even that will work) - assuming they’d give a clean chit to at least that country.

PS. Or maybe Namecheap is making a smart preemptive business move. It’s a good possibility that very soon Russians might not be able to pay them for renewals (at least for sometime) and then when they start letting the domains expire, and rightly so, they do not want to deal with “please be considerate”.

Hello Namecheap: Are you sure this will help your objective?

Putin is a monster and his war is horrible.

As you've probably seen from the 'prisoners of war' videos out of Ukraine, most soldiers don't want to fight this war (and are mislead).

Tech-savvy Russians (have their own domain) will also be the ones that use a VPN to read foreign news. Very few in the Russian "tech scene" like Putin.

Shutting down their means of communication may make it harder for them to arrange demonstrations, etc.

Instead, you should "magically" add emails to their inboxes, with e.g. Zelenskyy's speech to the Russian people, or add banners when they login to control panels etc.

(I'm not Russian btw, I'm European and not a customer)

It is another thing if the decision was made due to notice from your government. Otherwise, as a Chinese and someone pretty pissed off by what Putin did (not just recently in Ukraine, he is been crazy long before that), I'm sorry, this decision is beyond stupid.

Imagine a Russian kid just done protecting, escaped the police assert and got this email on their way home, how they would feel? The word is probably Betrayed.

I'm not a customer of Namecheap and I don't know the rationale behind it. But if the Russian government or oligarchs are using your service, maybe ban them directly. Not all Russian are pro-war. Your passionate sanction will just make the life of regular Russians harder and push them to the very authoritarian government that they might disagree with, simply because it's the only government willing to treat them more fairly.

One funny story: Awhile back I've read a discussion about US sanctions against China on an underground Chinese website. One of the funny reply said something like "In the end this website will shutdown probably not due to crackdown, but because the owner cannot pay for the hosting fee from their Chinese credit card".

I hope the company reconsider it.

The point is very much to create additional cost and disruption for the Russian economy. Namecheap’s step doesn’t do much in this regard, but perhaps it convinces other services to follow suit and stop doing business with Russian entities. After all, it’s the Russian economy that pays for the war. Whatever creates a competitive disadvantage for a Russian companies will subsequently harm their revenue stream and the tax they’re due.

For the record: Nobody with a sane state of mind believes that the Russian people are “evil” or guilty of their leadership’s atrocities in Ukraine. They just happen to be the subjects of an authoritarian government and an onslaught of propaganda. At best, one could say that far too many are complicit and too few stand up to Putin. But admittedly, it’s a tough ask for people to protest a government that murders journalists and poisons opposition politicians.

Did the Europeans stop buying natural gas from Russia?

It’s a lot harder to grandstand when you’re freezing to death.

I also got this email. How will this affect me?

I dont have any Russian domains/tlds, nor am I in Russia and never have been. I'm in England, born here and have lived here my whole life?

The only domains I have are ".xyz" , ".cam", ".pw" tlds. My hosting is from Hetzner in Germany.

I have zero links to Russia.

The email says in bold "If you hold any top-level domains with us, we ask that you transfer them to another provider by March 6, 2022."

Which makes it seem to me like you are saying it will affect me somehow?

Response of namecheap CEO to a similar issue:

> You'll be fine, please contact us and we'll get you whitelisted. Point here if any confusion with our support team.

I sent off a support ticket, hopefully they sort it out, I was already in the process of moving a domain out anyway and was considering moving the others as they are nearing expiry/renewal anyway in a couple months.

I usually use Google Domains, they've been pretty solid for the last few years, the only reason I used Namecheap to begin with was because they were so cheap but now its almost the same price as most places to renew and theres little incentive to stay.

I hope it works out, good luck.

Even if they "handle" it correctly, it sounds like it is time to move your domains to someone who might not lash out as quickly.

Yeah, I've just initiated transfers on all my domains with them just in case they dont get back in time before the 6th.

It was only 5 domains out of my 16 that I had with namecheap but its still not fun to do, plus the ~£50 of renewal costs I've had to stick on credit card that I wasnt expecting at the moment when they are due ranging from April to August.

I managed to transfer 3 to Google Domains and the other two which were unsupported moved to Porkbun, I've heard good things about them.

I hope the transfers all go smoothly, I really dont wanna lose the domains, luckily I'm not a business and the domains are all personal for projects, vanity emails etc so any potential downtime in the switchover wont have too much impact.

I have 3 accounts with Namecheap and it seems odd, only one was flagged and I have no clue why, it would be interesting to know how they are deciding this particular account is connected to "Russia", I checked all my account details and compared them, all identical with the exception of the email addresses used to signup but they are all from the same domain, so like account1@domain.tld , account2@domain.tld etc. The only logical explanation I can come up with is my username is "MysticKnightUK" and perhaps they are seeing the abbreviation "UK" at the end as "Ukraine" rather than "United Kingdom", but even that is a stretch as their ISO 2 letter country code is "UA", however their 3 letter code is "UKR". It's a complete mystery to me.

Not living in Russia (moved because of the government oppression) apparently is not sufficient to not be hit by this ban, just having any russia-related information gets you kicked out looks like. Really great move by them.

If you are no longer based there and are not contributing to the regime in any way via taxes/duties we can whitelist you.

I’m not in Russia last 15 years, could you white list me, please? My Namecheap id is playspeed. I’m anti wars, and anti corruption, anti thug supporter. I wish no conflict had had started. Thanks. Wish you, guys, safety.

Does sending money back to your parents / grandparents in Russia count as "contributing to the regime"?

Personally I am glad I stopped doing business with a business that takes a snap political stance such as this.

I left Namecheap for their price increases years ago. Their names are not cheap by any means. But that's beside the point.

The timeframe they've laid out is ridiculous, for starters. If I had any .su domains with them (which I've always thought were pretty cool relics of the internet) I would be PISSED and SCRAMBLING to make changes right now... Not fun.

If you're in business, do business.

If you're in politics, do politics.

I am extremely happy with porkbun for anyone looking to move away from Namecheap.

For the record, I am 50% Ukrainian.

Shame on you, Namecheap.

The internet was meant to be completely neutral ground.

This is deeply concerning, as many have echoed, because you’re punishing people who are already on your side, for the most part. But it’s also concerning because you claim it’s not deplatforming as other registrars exist. Do you not think they will not follow your lead? Do you intend that only when a country violates human rights in the particular way that happened here that the aggressor’s country will be removed? I cannot know this, but what I can know is you’ve stated you will remove people this time, and hand waved it away as “not deplatforming.” No amount of mental gymnastics will make that not true. Even Cloudflare owned what they did when they removed 8chan. Either way, I have hundreds of domains on Namecheap, and now I’m thinking I’ll need to find a new registrar, lest the track record of the US be something I as a conscientious objecting citizen be held accountable for.

This makes me very uncomfortable, as a Russian. I have been living in Europe for the last > 16 years non stop (=refugee), but I still have (the only) Russian citizenship.

I completely understand the utter pointless of current war, but when will we start to see random Russians being threatened just for the sake being/speaking Russian on the street? You can't say both "Don't generalize!! All `X` are not like this!" and then go "Oh yeah all Russian bad. No cookie for your Russian a$$".

I don't see it happening right now, but that thought have crossed my mind already, and I am sure if that war continues, I won't be alone having it

> Unfortunately, due to the Russian regime's war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine

Just to clarify, does your policy only apply to russians and their war crimes and human rights violations against ukraine specifically or is it a blanket policy? Will you refuse to register users from say the UK or France for their war crimes and human rights violations? Or say israel or saudi arabia? Or china or the US?

I guess I'm asking is this, are you doing this for free publicity or for genuine moral concern. You've been in business since 2000 and russia attacked georgia ( 2008? ). Did you stop registration also? Also, since 2000, there have been war crimes committed in iraq, afghanistan, syria, libya, etc, can you remind us what actions you took then and which peoples you prevented from using your service.

As a non-russia customer, I am inmediatly moving all of my domains I host at namecheap to another provider.

this kind of stuff from private companies are useless, and downvote me all you want, they do not work, and dont come to lecture me from your SF desk while im living in a sanctioned country, how did the 2017-2019 sactions for Venezuela worked? Everyone in the world moved on and even forgot about our country, and the comunist regime is more alive than ever, all the sactions just fucked the regular people like me, for example my gf is still explaining after 2 years to those idiots at transferwise support that her money sitting on their super awesome "no borders account" has nothing to do with the venezuelan govt and that it's from her US based remote job but they just decided to steal over 22k USD from her solely based on her citizenship. Or should I tell you how stripe completely killed my friend's startup by suspending their accout because they had venezuelans IPs and venezuelan citizenship and aparently they aren't able to check that they (normal citizens) arent the people on the OFAC list, (like 5 names LOL)

So yeah, dont mind me, get your likes, get all the nice advertisiment you want while prettending you are helping and is nothing more than a PR move while messing with normal people with normal lives, struggling everyday but you won't get me as a customer anymore, we are all suppose to be professionals at our tech jobs.

You inadvertently argued against your own point. Your friend's startup died, that damages the economy, that is what economic sanctions are designed to do. Whether the specific instance of sanctioning was justified is another matter of course, but the point is that the economy was damaged. That hurts ordinary people yes, but - this is a war. Better an economic hit than being bombed or shot.

> That hurts ordinary people yes, but - this is a war. Better an economic hit than being bombed or shot.

40,000+ people died in Venezuela because of sanctions.

[0]: https://cepr.net/press-release/report-finds-us-sanctions-on-...

This is an super exaggerated number to attributte only to sactions, our TOTALITARIAN REGIME actions killed those people and the reality is that sanctions just helped them

Before the sanctions, (that started in 2015), we had already huge economical problems (and problems of kinds), mainly due the goverment focusing on making one of the greatest corruption acts of all times [1] and focusing on systematically making the venezuelan population poorer, sicker, hungrier and dependant, in order to keep the power and keep stealing money.

The thing is, sanctions did absolutelly NOTHING in favour of venezuelans citizens and their freedom, in fact, they made it easier for the Venezuelan totalitarian regime to justificate their acts (forcing hunger, violating human rights [2], etc) and made it stronger in a way that since our country got alienated, we got more support from other totalirian regimes such as China and Rusia.

So hurting the ordinary people, as that post say, was just putting an extra nail to the coffin of every venezuelan that died of hunger and sickness.. Was just encouraging more people to fight for freedoom with rocks vs guns and died or got detained [3] [4]...

All for nothing, and 6 years later, over 300billions usd stolen later, 2.000.000% hyperinflation later, 7.000.000 venezuelans gone later, over 400 people killed in protest later, over 5,000 political detentions later, the govt is still there and... blocking venezuelans from using stripe, transferwise, etc, is going to help us haha ..

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Venezuela

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Venezuela

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_protests_(2014%E2%8...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Venezuelan_protests

If sanctions kill any amount of people greater than zero makes it a deadly weapon against innocent people and should never be used. Additionally, anyone who uses sanctions should be considered committing an act of terrorism because of their intended effect being killing innocent civilians.

By that reasoning the west would never have invaded Nazi Germany. Lots of innocent people on both sides died in that invasion, and yet the world is now a better place because of it.

Well you won't know without knowing the difference. Just say that we've a different order but for ordinary people probably make no difference.

You born after that so did I. Is like saying that the world is better place now because Napoleon invaded Europe. Well, you won't know what would be if he didn't so your argument has no logic (and, in addition you have no idea how life was during that time)

His argument also fails with the Ukraine situation. The world may be a better place today because the USSR disbanded, but Ukraine would not be being invaded by Russia today if the USSR never disbanded.

Uhm, no? If the USSR never disbanded, hundreds of millions would still be suffering under a broken system instead of starting on the path to recovery a few decades ago.

The breakup was unquestionably a good thing for humanity.

Are you actually arguing we should’ve let the Nazis be and slaughtering every non-Aryan in sight?

Luckily sanctions don't directly kill anyone so it's not an issue.

Have you ever lived under sanctions? Have you lived your whole life in a country who has only been an imposter of sanctions?

Yes. No.

Instead of trying to use some vague "you haven't lived it!" argument, it would be nice if you could provide an example of someone directly killed by sanctions.

If you need a medicine to live and I take away your access to that medicine which results in your death, I have killed you.

Would you agree? If you do, then sanctions directly kill people.

No, that is indirect. Thus when that same medicine gets delayed en-route due to a large rain storm, one wouldn't say you were "killed by the rain".

So you want NATO to start bombing Russia, or...?

I'm firmly anti-war so that means I'm anti-bombing as well as being anti-sanctioning.

The easiest of all positions to take.

It is the best position to take. How many civilian deaths is too much for you, if not zero?

Ignoring regime change for a minute, the two big levers EU/USA seem to have is sanctions and proxy war (by funding and equipping Ukraine). Anything else like bombings are immediately off the table due to nuclear deterrence. Not doing anything seems like the second worst possible outcome as appeasement will only lead to disaster in the inevitable follow up wars. If we take minimizing civilian casualties as the goal, is your position that equipping Ukraine and leaving Russia alone otherwise is the best option?

It is by far the weakest position to take. Your world with no aggressors is fantasy. The only person who had the choice to do nothing was Putin. Our failure to respond to him would result in many more deaths. Incidental casualties from sanctions are unfortunate, but in real life we always have make compromises.

Are you willing to die for this better world? It is strictly immoral to condemn others to death at your benefit while others must die for your gain.

If your children or siblings or parents had to die for you to live, would you choose that?

That isn't even a good attempt at a straw-man. Let's be honest, what qualifies as "my gain" in your argument here is "less death." So yeah, I'm willing to do what it takes to reduce death.

You're arguing that we should do nothing and let Putin go on his rampage unopposed, as if that will result in less death. To say that I disagree with you would be pretty redundant at this point, and you're not making good faith arguments, so I'm out.

You are making the assumption that people _must_ die. Not only that, but the people that must die should be dying because of sanctions, which means those that must die should be civilians.

The gain I mentioned was that you and your loved ones live. You and your loved ones get to enjoy a longer life with the price of other peoples loved ones dying from sanctions. You believe that's the best way forward.

People _must_ die when one country invades another with their military. That's how military invasions work.

Believe it or not, the Russian soldiers that invaded Ukraine weren't shooting paintball guns.

Do you have any proposal as to what the rest of the world should do while Russia brutalizes a country it has no business in attacking? It's definitely not a "defeat them in the marketplace of ideas" kind of situation.

Killing Russian civilians isn't a solution which is why I am firmly anti-bombing and anti-sanctions.

So what is a solution?

> that damages the economy, that is what economic sanctions are designed to do

They're designed to cause regime change, or at least diplomatic changes. That has failed in Venezuela's case (and Cuba's, and North Korea's, and Iran's, and so on).

What's funny (actually, it's very sad) is that any sanctions strong enough to truly harm Russia would destroy the stability of the world's financial system by triggering a global liquidity crisis; we would see a repeat of 2008 (likely worse due to some factors having changed since then). Be careful what you wish for, as those who virtue signal naively today, thinking it'll only affect citizens in faraway lands, may themselves face frozen ATMs, credit cards, and bank transfers in a few months, if the worst-case (i.e. their dream scenario) occurs.

"any sanctions strong enough to truly harm Russia would destroy the stability of the world's financial system by triggering a global liquidity crisis"

You'd need to back this up with some real evidence for it to be convincing.

As it stands right now the freezing of Russian reserves is in effect and international markets are essentially untouched, what are these additional sanctions you are referring to?

I am not an expert in this area but is seems to me that if Russia disappeared from the financial system, with an annual GDP of 1.4 trillion, nobody would really notice after the initial write-downs. It is one tenth of China, and has been chasing away FDI for over a decade - thus reducing its international impact. But I am open to explanations as to why this is a big deal, let me know!

I think the issue here is that sanctions require usually time to really take effect. The government is already installed by the time they come. The dictators and their cronies are shielded and live lo comfortably.

The population is either brainwashed or brutally repressed when it complains (particularly eliminating leaders).

It’s hard to make a case for sanctions as the solution as there are plenty of counter examples: Cuba has been heavily sanctioned for over half a century and little has changed no matter how dire the situation gets.

I wish they worked for sure, because what other resources you have against a nuclear power?

Edit to add: also, sanctions have exceptions (usually to shielding the sanctioning countries from suffering consequences, as in this case with Russia and the energy related transactions, with the effect of keep that money flowing for Russia).

And these tyrants workaround the sanctions in many cases with the help of other nations.

> I think the issue here is that sanctions require usually time to really take effect. The government is already installed by the time they come. The dictators and their cronies are shielded and live lo comfortably.

> The population is either brainwashed or brutally repressed when it complains (particularly eliminating leaders).

> It’s hard to make a case for sanctions as the solution as there are plenty of counter examples: Cuba has been heavily sanctioned for over half a century and little has changed no matter how dire the situation gets.

> I wish they worked for sure, because what other resources you have against a nuclear power?

> Edit to add: also, sanctions have exceptions (usually to shielding the sanctioning countries from suffering consequences, as in this case with Russia and the energy related transactions, with the effect of keep that money flowing for Russia).

> And these tyrants workaround the sanctions in many cases with the help of other nations.

That didn't answer their question at all.

Your reply doesn't seem to address my point directly. The appeal to "time" doesn't really work given that that Moscow stock exchange has been closed since last Friday and seems unlikely to open this week.

Cuba has changed quite a bit in the last half century, I would look into it if I were you, most resorts in the country are Cuba-FDI joint ventures - it is complicated but sanctions where most of the world actually disagrees with you are a lot more difficult than this situation.

In this particular case it seems that the work-arounds are not generally available. The Russian government was not prepared to have their own reserves frozen.

> that is what economic sanctions are designed to do

Agreed - that is the point. To hurt ordinary people so that they care (not said lightly). Sanctions are designed to punish a whole country.

While messed up, you can't just affect/punish the leadership. If you could we would already be doing that. The way to hurt the leaders is to hurt the ordinary people such that they vote, rise up, etc against the governmental actions.

Russia's ruble has dropped up to 40%+ because of the sanctions and the people are pulling their money in droves. This puts huge pressure on Putin to rethink what he's doing by making it incredibly expensive to wage this war.

Not really, his point is that sanctions do more harm to regular people. Kenya right now is the only country pointing out how this will cause a humanitarian crisis, because they know what that looks like. We should stand together against autocratic imperialists regimes, sanctions should be targeted at the regime and russian oligarchs

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docindex/v1...

I don't think it's a PR move. The company has many Ukrainian employees, and those people are understandably angry now, and want to lash out at something to do with Russia; so they found a target within their reach. It's still a bad idea because it doesn't actually help anything except Russian propaganda, but I can see where they are coming from.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone said that there are more tech companies with Ukrainian employees than there aren't. Ukrainians are very educated (they keep studying to avoid being forced to join in the military) and since there's not much happening in Ukraine when it comes to employment, they move out to work elsewhere.

That's no excuse to do stupid shit.

I'm not from Russia but moved my domain from namecheap to gandi. I saw a lot of people here and on Twitter complain that they got the termination email but have nothing to do with Russia. Now I pay 2 more Euros per year but I have peace of mind that the domain I use for my main email won't get shutdown because I fall into hastily setup filters, atleast I hope so.

They have employees in Kharkiv.

If I had employees in a city being bombed out, I'd probably stop doing business with/within the entity doing the bombing, too.

It's not a PR move. If my arm is being injured, I move to protect it. I'm sure you would, too.

Very well said - the context here is key.

>It's not a PR move. If my arm is being injured, I move to protect it. I'm sure you would, too.

Stop doing business with Russians who have no power over Putin is not really "mov[ing] to protect" an injured arm. It's more like an angry wail. Which, fair enough. It's a perfectly understandable desire. I'd probably feel the same way if I were a Namecheap employee in Ukraine. But it doesn't really do anything to protect Ukraine's interests.

They are choosing to stop doing business with the country dropping bombs on their employees and their homes. I didn’t read any grandstanding into it, just an expression of moral obligation toward their employees.

That’s about as cut and dried as it gets.

I think people on this board get very much caught up in the business aspect and fail to see the human side that is driving these actions.

On the one hand, sanctions are bad because they often harm citizens of the targeted regime than they do the leadership they're meant to influence. Any right-thinking person should sympathize with the toll that they have on ordinary people.

On the other hand, sanctions are believed to work -- at least in the long term -- precisely because of this effect. The (usually unspoken) theory is that eventually the people won't be able to bear the impact on their day-to-day lives and will rise up and overthrow their leadership. Hopefully Venezuelans, like Russians, will eventually do just this.

as will I

Any recommendations anybody?

Let me know how many domains you’re transferring out of Namecheap so that I can transfer that many back in. For everyone upset about this decision, there will be 100s who applaud it.

And for every 100 that applaud this performative virtue signaling nonsense, there will be 1000 that will see through it.

Namecheap is entitled to terminate its business relationship with RU entities, just as you are entitled to do the same with Namecheap.

I, for one, will be moving my own personal domain to Namecheap at next renewal. This is a political issue, and I am on the side of sanctioning the invader.

He’s right. It just ends up hurting regular folks.

Putin and friends are doing just fine under sanctions. They expected sanctions for a long time.

This effectively does nothing except make the lives of the non invaders harder.

If you actually want to help Ukraine pick up a gun and go fight.

It’s the regular folks who could wake up from their comfy lethargy and actually protest their government.

Yes, economic sanctions have limited potential to actually topple a totalitarian leadership. With Russia, the concern goes deeper. This country is armed to the teeth and poses a massive threat to Europe. Hence, the point of these sanctions is very much to also weaken the Russian economy and curb its capacity to finance more wars.

> It’s the regular folks who could wake up from their comfy lethargy and actually protest their government.

The problem is that many of those who use namecheap are already against the regime because they know English, have access to another point of view on actions taken by the regime in Ukraine.

Fucking them up may turn some of them back to the regime because current narrative of the propaganda is "West companies do not care about you and they will do everything in their power to screw you".

Speaking personally, I would not turn back to the regime, that would apply that I liked it once. I never liked it.

Who do you think you are calling people struggling to get by to wake up from their “comfy lethargy” and “actually protest”?

People don’t protest when they’re struggling to make ends meet and civil institutions are weakened.

The only effect of the inhumane economic sanctions has been tightening the ruling class’s grip. They did not work in Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, not even Syria. They have however caused enormous human suffering.

I also don’t like that the Russian people have to deal with the consequences of Putin’s delusions, but I can’t think of another option for governments and companies like Namecheap.

That said, I think you’re very wrong about this: “ People don’t protest when they’re struggling to make ends meet and civil institutions are weakened.”

I believe most revolutions are a result of “struggling to make ends meet”.

e.g. First example I could think of extreme struggle leading to revolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution, another more relevant example where extreme struggle led to revolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution, and history has a lot more (the US from the UK, India from the UK, the UK from the UK - i.e. the Magna Carta). Meanwhile, sadly history has almost zero revolutions where the population wasn’t suffering.

I’ll say again tho. This is me pointing out examples from history. I don’t like or enjoy that the world works the way it works.

The people who are supposed to wake up already did. The people who don't give a shit will not give a shit.

Putin is with a democratic party. Do you know how big it is? It's more than half the country.

Now, waking up in this context means civil war.

>If you actually want to help Ukraine pick up a gun and go fight.

Killing people is better than inconveniencing regular folks?

Even if you were of that opinion and if namecheap ceo were to do that, it would most likely have less of an effect than what he just did.

I'm Russian. My mother is 78 and her life depends on regular supply of imported medical drugs. If the supply supplies stop due to sanctions, agree dies in 7 days max.

She was opposing Putin's power with everything at her disposal. So 'sanctioning the invader' will kill her.

Sanctioning namecheap users will not hurt Putin at the slightest. It will hurt people who are opposing him, so instead of protesting Putin - and IT people are the most of protesting group of Russians - they'll have to worry about their projects and having food. Good job, namecheap and their supporters.

I won't be trusting namecheap ever again after this. Also, targeting groups of people by their nationality, without individual guilt is something that fascists do.

The point is to mess with Russian lives so they don’t put up with Putin as their ruler and world destroyer. Any way we can put pain on the Russians right now that doesn’t include nuclear war is better then the alternative.

As a russian who is going to move from NC - you are being very unproductive at least.

The russians who are using nc's services are mainly the ones who are protesting actively and who are concerned about their privacy for this reason.

Quite often NC is (was?) used to host email domains and such. This decision hurts people who are already anti-war and anti-government. Most of Putins supporters never even heard about Namecheap.

These idiots are doing it so that they get free publicity for doing stupid shit like this.

I will be moving my domains to epik.com

Punishing every day Russians is a pretty low blow to be perfectly frank. I get what you're doing here, it's a great virtue signal and all, but the only people you're actually impacting are everyday businesses and people that generally don't give a flying fuck what the government does. I'll be pulling all my services off your platform, purely because you've demonstrated that you project your own moral authority over the business, which is unpredictable. Regardless of my own personal views of anti-war and anti-foreign-interference.

I have to wonder what the bar for this sort of severe action is considering that so many companies seem to be taking these steps. If it is "country invades another country" or "human rights abuse happening perpetrated by $COUNTRY" then I think there's a long list of regimes that need to be added to the will not serve list.

Only few countries or regimes threaten to use nuclear weapons when trying to be stopped. I think Russia is on another level here.

I for one welcome this kind of development and hope to see more of it. Corporations shouldn't just be held to the standard of how much profit can they make. It's crazy to me that there's a whole separate "B corp" designation when in my mind we should have a by-default expectation that organizations consider their impact on social & environmental issues.

Shouldn't they be held to the standard of providing you with the services you paid for? What you're hoping to see more of changes with the wind, and all of the things that trigger cancellation may not be disclosed when you sign up and agree to rely on the provider, or you may not be aware.

Namecheap is to a large extent a Ukrainian company, so there's not a lot of inconsistency here, nor much threat for setting a precedent. (If country A invades country B, residents of country A can expect difficult circumstances doing business with vendors in country B.)

Interesting I didn’t know. It’s odd, Namecheap is registered in Arizona. Does employing a lot of people from a country make a company effectively from that country? A lot of companies employed large numbers of people in Hong Kong, particularly in the financial services and tech industries. Many of them still do business there today. I guess it depends. Nevertheless it’s probably a good idea for us all to reconsider where we do business based on the geopolitical moves our home countries make.

I have 30+ domains registered w/ Namecheap. I recently bought an ebook about UI design from a Russian. And I'm a longtime customer of JetBrains. While JetBrains is officially based in Prague (Czech Republic) I understand that many/most of their employees are in Russia. Similarly Namecheap is officially based in Arizona but many (most?) of their employees are in the Ukraine.

I'm definitely ambivalent about this move from Namecheap. I'd be curious to know whether this decision was made unilaterally by Namecheap's US-based CEO or whether it was pushed by their Ukrainian employees.

While Namecheap are understandably angry about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I'm skeptical that cutting of their Russian customers will do anything to help Ukraine. If anything it will only cause Namecheap to lose revenue and thereby force them to cut jobs in their Ukrainian based workforce. Long term it also creates reputational risk for Namecheap as a company that makes decisions based on short-term political factors.

Requiring Namecheap's Russian customers to transfer their domains to another registrar in the next week is also easier said than done given the financial sanctions against Russia will probably make it much more difficult for them to pay for transferring the domains to a different registrar. I think it's safe to say that the average tech-savvy Russian is probably more anti-Putin than the average Russian as they have to jump through hoops and mess w/ VPNs to access western based services such as Twitter etc. So in practice this move might lead to de facto censorship and loss of income for their Russian customers, many of whom would be against the war.

This is a terrible move. Virtue signaling at it's worst. Putin literally gives p 0 f'ck about namecheap. It doesn't do squat to him but meanwhile you're hurting regular Russian users for something they have no control over. Do you think they will be pressuring Putin to stop the war bc they can't use namecheap anymore? They will likely to be more mad at the west. Lastly, doing this is just going to increase the segregation of the internet even more which goes completely against the original intention of the internet.

Virtue signaling is yelling about your virtues without actually getting off your ass and doing something.

This is very different, this is the company sacrificing some of their business to take a moral stance against a fascist regime invading a neighboring sovereign.

I don't care about this war, and all I get from this is that this domain registrar could block me with no notice for an abitrary reason. They (Namecheap) can do whatever they want, but I'll be actively working to deter people from using it.

They always could (and in the past they have to individuals). Any provider can, but at least now we know one that for certain will.

Exactly, thank you for pointing that out.

This is far from arbitrary.

You're the second person who I've seen admit "I don't care about this war" in these comments. Anticipating a whataboutism, yeah I might not pay attention as much to ones that aren't on the news as much but it literally doesn't take a minute to have a little empathy and if you can't muster that up having any tact at all no one should say that they don't care, just seems pathetic. Good call on using throwaway though

>This is a terrible move. Virtue signaling at it's worst.

The majority of Namecheap's employees live in Ukraine.

This is a really, really fucked up thing to do. Many Russians are currently scrambling to move their families and businesses abroad, away from Putin's regime (myself included). This will put additional pressure on people who are in a very difficult situation already and actively oppose the war.

I sincerely hope Namecheap reconsiders.

They have offices in Ukraine. I got this e-mail as well. This is collateral damage. You can get an another domain. Many people won't get their life back. Fuck Putin, fuck the war.

The only people who will suffer from this are the people who are currently in a difficult situation due to them fleeing from Russia. Big companies and people staying in Russia will easily absorb this, of course.

>Big companies and people staying in Russia will easily absorb this

While it seems hard to fathom how big this anti-Putin tsunami really is but can you name any big companies based in North Korea? Like North Korea, Russia has just become reliant upon China for pretty much everything.

I don't see the hundred of thosands of people fleeing Russia at the moment. I do see them trying to get out of Ukraine though. Please stop trying to make yourself a victim. You're really not. You're just a troll.

You are being inconvenienced. People of Ukraine are suffering. Grow up.

Collateral to what? They aren't dealing any actual damage to the regime, just some random people who had the misfortune of being born in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This is NOT collateral damage, these people are the actual target. Who do you think will suffer from this decision? Developers and it nerds mostly.

Hi @NamecheapCEO! What do you say about Belarusian citizens? they are also terminated? Who remember 2020 year in Belarus? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Belarusian_p...) Now almost all of Belarus supports Ukraine, there are guys who went to help the army of Ukraine. On 27/02 practically everyone who even went out with a flag was detained by the police. I would not like to see "deplatforming" based on what the government is doing. It would be a great shame for ordinary citizens....

I'm Russian. I've been doing everything I can (legally and peacefully) to protest against the regime here for last 10 years. I participated in protests, fought with propaganda on social networks, talked with my friends and relatives who watch TV a lot and showed them a different point of view. Yep, it's clearly that it wasn't enough — the regime is still here. Right now I feel screwed. My mates who just left the country for good and obtained EU\US\etc residence permits have no problems right now, but me, who tried to do something to change what's happening in my country, have problems.

How is this supposed to help? Ok, i get the virtue signaling angle, but seriously. What do you expect? That people want domains so much that they'll drop everything, abandon their families, kids, jobs, and go rise up against a well-defended president who'll jail or kill them for protesting?

This does NOTHING to help Ukraine, hurts INNOCENT Russians, and makes you look good in the eyes of only the least attentive....

So...why?

If we were virtue signaling we wouldn't willingly be giving up a not non significant part of our business. This hurts us financially but it's the right thing to do, at least for us.

Your leader/country is already killing innocent civilians/ukranians. They are putting it all on the line with their lives. They didn't ask for this yet they are dying for it. Change needs to come and the only way it can is for the Russian population to put it on the line as well.

> Your leader/country is already killing innocent civilians/ukranians.

MY leader? Nice assumption, buddy.

Oh, if only the world were as simple as you pretend (or, worse: think) it is. Sanctions have never ever worked, historically. Just ask cubans. And "we lose money on this" hardly makes you right, just makes you look sillier yet.

Where were you with cutting off service of countries starting pointless wars when America invaded Afghanistan and Iraq?

Enjoy living in the stone age.

I am truly appalled by a response like this. Is this really the Namecheap CEO? I am sincerely glad I have never made use of your services (as a non-Russian, European citizen). By your logic, YOU should have acted against the (proxy) warfare the US is doing throughout the years.

I can understand the need for sanctions against belligerent countries, but this move seems worrying to me. As an American citizen, whose government kills innocent civilians all over the world with some regularity, I don't see how I could use Namecheap after this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Ira...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_in_the_war...

What makes this one different? I can understand being appalled at governments waging war at the cost of civilian life, but it's not like that just started 5 days ago...

I think the difference is namecheap has a non insignificant number of employees in Ukraine.

Where was your conscience when innocents of other countries were being killed? - Didn't the US kill innocents in all its wars? - Didn't the Saudi's kill innocent journalists? - Isn't Israel killing innocent Palestinians? - Isn't China killing innocents in Xinjiang? - Even innocents have lost their lives in my own country in the name of religion.

I have been donating to Ukraine's cause since this war started, but I will gladly move my business away from your company.

As a Namecheap customer who has nothing to do with Russia or the Ukraine, this type of selective political censoring rubs me the wrong way.

I don't want to use a utility or service provider who thinks they have some special virtuous ability to evaluate and judge the ethical behaviour or appropriateness of their customers.

If customers are breaking the law or laws are passed that mean that you can't provide service to customers in certain countries or regions, then fine kick them off your service. Otherwise provide the service that you operate.

This type of response makes me less likely to continuing to use Namecheap in the future.

As someone who’s usually strongly anti-crypto, this piece of news just bolstered my support for fully decentralized domain registration systems, whether blockchain based or not, by 10x. In the short term I’m moving all my Namecheap domains to another registrar (as a non-Russian who’s not affected, yet). In the long term I hope we do away with all of these parasitic registrars for something as fundamental as domain name registration. They provide exactly nothing other than adding a couple entries to someone else’s zone file.

+1, this decision has made me rethink my anti crypto stance.

Could someone recommend me good alternatives? I'll be moving all of my domains. I will never support any business that decides to go political and start deplatforming/censoring, whether I agree with their views or not.

> I will never support any business that decides to go political and start deplatforming/censoring,

As it's been frequently lost in this thread, the majority of Namecheap's employees are in Ukraine (>800), so I wouldn't necessarily frame it in the same way. I would first place yourself in their shoes and ask yourself what you would do.

I moved to Porkbun a while back from Namecheap after Namecheap became the key source of fraudulently registered scam domains on the internet. Namecheap doesn't care to enforce their TOS or the ICANN agreement, which is extremely uncommon. After researching, this is a fact recognised by scammers so it's abused significantly.

Apparently the CEO can take action against regular Russians for being Russians, but don't take down phishing domains registered exclusively for and used in SMS scams because... free speech? That's literally the reason given :-)

When I spoke about it here[0] the replies were quite interesting and relevant to today. At least one of the people who were defending Namecheap then are now supporting their actions against Russia today, which is quite interesting. Actually reading through an older post[1] would be really interesting to contrast with the replies we're seeing in this thread.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22497869

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24508399

This is an extremely big mistake. Not in the sense of politics, but because domain name providers are entrusted by the community to manage a very important and valuable asset. You shouldn’t be making these decisions amongst yourselves and without input from the people and businesses you serve. In fact, there’s a word to describe this type of decision making process, which you might be hearing a lot in the news right now.

'The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security."'

I am not at all surprised and I think Russian citizens will see ever more of this as the invasion of Ukraine continues and shouldn’t be surprised as their links with the rest of the world start fraying and normal life starts fading in the rear view mirror…

Whether that kind of action is effective or even makes sense, I have no idea. I just don’t think it is even a little surprising. Russia started a war and you will see sides taken. As 190,000 Russian troops, artillery, and air-force rain death on Ukrainian population centers you can’t possibly expect to be able to play some CoD or watch a movie on Netflix like it’s any other day…

I understand the emotions at play and your inclination to support Ukraine, but blanket banning a country from your platform is not the answer.

This (1) adds to the incredible financial burden most normal, peace-loving Russians are in right now, (2) significantly erodes community trust in your platform, and (3) actually helps Putin on his quest to isolate his citizens from the Western-run half of the internet.

I have ~60 domains on Namecheap and have recommended you to my community for years. I can't, in good conscience, support a platform that makes sweeping generalizations/unilateral decisions like this. I urge you to reconsider.

Have they blocked China, as well? You know, because of all the human rights violations and (war) crimes there?

I despise communism as much as everyone, but at least China is (currently) not trying to violently expand its borders (a bit of posturing in the South China Sea is nothing compared to what is going on in Ukraine) and especially... it is not threatening to nuke everyone.

I know right? All they've done is just put a huge amount of people in concentration camps and silenced dissidents, while consolidating power in a one party state ruled by a dictator.

China is doing genocide against its Muslim population in Xinjiang.

Bless your heart. Take any modern media information with a grain of salt.

yes, when the people who actually went to the reeducation camps and actually got raped every day tell us about it, we should be sure not to believe them. great idea.

So it's perfectly fine to commit war crimes and wars of agression as long as you're trying to install a puppet and not to expand your borders? You should advice Putin as much.

It literally is OK if you are not shedding blood, just doing undercover color revolutions etc. It is human nature do want to increase your power, removing this outlet is not realistic. Just don't use physical violence, instead use subversion, etc.

Then it basically becomes one big game of chess or soccer, just between intelligence agencies. The trophy is power and influence. I am fine with this as long as no humans are physically harmed.

Therefore the 2014 coup was OK, but the 2022 war is not.

You're talking to a strawman. I was talking about other countries that commit warcrimes and wars of agression (every single NATO member in Libya, Saudi Arabia, Israel, etc...)

Also, it's false that the 2014 coup wasn't violent. It very much was.

> It is human nature do want to increase your power, removing this outlet is not realistic.

If you're aware of it, you can overcome it. It's not like "human nature" is an excuse.

"I didn't rape that woman because, you know, it's human nature for a man to want to have sex and spread his genes to the next generation. I was just giving in to my human nature."

Yeah, no. You can overcome "human nature" by understanding your actions and the effects they have on the environment around you. If it's net negative, stop doing it. If it's positive, keep doing it.

Or Israel

America dropped more bombs, killing more civilians in other countries than the rest of the world combined in the last 50 years. Oh I forgot it's justified bc they're fighting terrorism, for freedom and/or the killed are brown people which doesn't count. Got it.

I'm not American.

I see some tech companies (especially infrastructure providers) hopping on the cancel culture train because it is also free marketing, at this point... Their shallow stance makes it clear they first decided they have to cancel the Russians, and then come up with passable, bordering on incoherent reasons to do so.

I wish for consumer companies to think of second-order effects before committing to such measures.

Though, the train is well and truly on a rampage, at this point... there's no stopping it... you'll be left behind if you don't hop on one... damned if you do, damned if you don't.

It's ironic that some people are using "whataboutism" as some trump card argument when people compare this actions of other countries, and in some cases linking to the Wikipedia article, when the article itself [1] points out:

> Those who use whataboutism are not necessarily engaging in an empty or cynical deflection of responsibility: whataboutism can be a useful tool to expose contradictions, double standards, and hypocrisy.

And even notes that people have "criticized the usage of accusations of whataboutism by American news outlets, arguing that accusations of whataboutism have been used to simply deflect criticisms of human rights abuses perpetrated by the United States or its allies."

Whataboutism has meaning only in a specific context, and is not a mallet to beat down anyone who points out any double standard you're uncomfortable with.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

The loss of tax revenue is not going to be large enough for anyone in Russia to even hear about it, but the ordinary people who lose hosting or have to change registrars will suffer in some small, appreciable way. I'll give Namecheap the benefit of the doubt and say their heart is in the right place, but this is not a productive action for them to take.

I want to add to my former comment here [1] that I transferred my domain from namecheap when I saw this thread and the CEOs response on (28th Februar) and then afterwards was met with an automated email reply that left me actually stunning:

-------------------------------

"STANDARDIZED FORM OF AUTHORIZATION

DOMAIN NAME TRANSFER - Confirmation of Registrar Transfer Request

Attention: Redacted for Privacy Re: Transfer of [domain]

received notification on 2/28/2022 at [timestamp] PM that you have requested a transfer to another domain registrar.

If you WANT TO PROCEED with this transfer, you do not need to respond to this message. If you WISH TO CANCEL the transfer, please go to our website

If we do not hear from you by 3/5/2022 at [timestamp] PM, the transfer will proceed.

If you have any questions about this process, please contact support@namecheap.com"

-------------------------------

3/5/2022 is one day off your proposed limit here, therefore I suppose if I wouldn't have reacted in the first one or two hours since it was published I would have had to choose a new domain registrar, start the transfer and pray to god it would be accepted before the limit ran out?

But still, I am completely ignoring the ability for you to actually pay back your customers In the case of any refunds in that timeframe in case of any current or new sanctions. I am curious how are you going to pay back your russian customers in a week when you cannot just press refund or type in their IBAN for the money they paid you? Are you going to send them a letter with [currency]?

I dm'ed namecheaps Twitter account, but I got no response. I publically @ed your Twitter handle since I was in disbelief that NamechepCEO was actually your CEO and got no response. I know this has just been a few hours but I lost all believe in your company.

I probably wouldn't have made your company much money, or would I have made much impact since it is just my personal email domain.. But this email domain means a lot to me since it is my personal familiyname domain and can't be easiliy changed. This is also why I wrote this comment, I may not bring you much value, but this domain brings me a ton of value and I'd hate to lose it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30507523

This inflicts pain on regular Russian people.

While I understand the need to take a moral stand, this doesn't actually accomplish much. I commented on this before and it bears repeating - the population is heavily brainwashed and many people will view your move as yet another action by the West against the righteous side that they are. Pain, but no reaction.

You want to actually make a difference - keep the service up, let Putin cut it off and let their own regime inflict the very same pain that you are about to inflict. This will net both the pain and a reaction. The way things are going, it will come to exactly that and very soon. They didn't build and test in-country DNS for giggles.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/26/russia-starts-testing-its-...

Good on you, Namecheap. You’ve earned my continued business and genuine respect with this action.

If they turned off all your domains the next time America invaded a country, would you still be happy? Obviously they wont because by chance they are also in America, but it should make you think for a second just how fair this really is.

Yes; it would provide me and my elected representatives with tangible evidence of economic damage to point to in support of our case against the invasion.

What was required to prove - the ukranian are nazis, the nazis that as in ww2 discriminated by nation and now fascism is flourishing in Ukraine, the world will not forget the genocide that you have set up in Donbass. Just google the children of Donbass and you will find facts and pictures of these Nazis smiling in front of bombs with captions All for Children. Fuk Ukraine, fuk usa

That's unfortunate. And I for the record, think Russian invasion of Ukraine is a serious threat to the whole globe, the conflict potentially might get out of hands with no limits in sight.

However, businesses should not take political or legal stances on their own. This is a slippery slope as many have pointed out.

Rather let the governments decide on that part. When a government decides something, at that point - it becomes a legal obligation and a justified action.

Otherwise, it is an abrupt all of sudden termination of contract which would make potential and existing customers uncomfortable as well.

What's the guarantee that Namecheap won't pull the plug on European or Chinese customers some day with similar rationale?

I've also transferred all of my domains out of Namecheap, not many (15 total) but I won't support a business that blames citizens for their leader and punishes them for something they had nothing to do with.

This is an absolutely pathetic showing that has destroyed a decade of trust in a couple of hours (I bought my first domain from Namecheap in 2012)

As this is now the kind of behavior we can expect of Namecheap, I do not trust them to do the right thing when it comes to upholding their other values (such as the one they mentioned, free speech). This is a CEO who is letting their (justified) emotions make crucial business decisions that do nothing but decay trust.

Epik is jumping for joy right now.

I'm canceling my Namecheap services as well and will forever not recommend you. Corporate activism is one of the worst evils in our society and I won't support it.

This line of behavior only leads to ruin. Leave the fighting to the military.

Many people in this thread seem to feel that a Namecheap domain is an inalienable right. On the contrary, a company whose employees are being brutally besieged as we speak has every right to reassess who it does business with.

Unfortunately, that is not the customer's problem. But yes, Namecheap has every right to irreversibly damage their brand, of course.

Namecheap is by far the worst registrar I've ever used. Through the years, I've occasionally had people who wanted my domains use bots to spam abuse reports on them, and Namecheap remains as one of two that buckled.

> Additionally, and with immediate effect, you will no longer be able to use Namecheap Hosting, EasyWP, and Private Email with a domain provided by another registrar in zones .ru, .xn--p1ai (рф), .by, .xn--90ais (бел), and .su. All websites will resolve to 403 Forbidden.

What a dick move. Turning off services without warning is a brutal move, and taken against customers singly based on where they’re located is completely unjustified. At least give people some time to move away.

I wouldn’t trust Namecheap with my business after this. Who knows which customers their CEO will randomly decide to terminate without warning next?

Lol, I also received this message. I've lived in Poland for the past 31 years and am also busy volunteering with help to Ukrainian refugees. I never voted for anything related to Russia, because I'm not a registered voter - I don't have a "propiska" (legal address in Russia) since 1995. Very incompetent move, Mr. CEO of Namecheap. I understand you want to get likes on social media and get rich on this hype. Instead I'd recommend donating money to real causes, like help on the Ukrainian border, food, medicine, migration attorneys. Your move is empty and stupid.

Might as well transfer your domains right now even if you're not from Russia because now that this precedent has been set, we don't know when they'll cancel your country.

Are they following a law or just arbitrarily and unilaterally deciding to do this? I am not Russian myself but I expect a domain name provider to be extremely neutral, unopinionated, and stable. Namecheap is showing to be neither so it can’t be trusted for important domains.

I cannot see the goal of this move. Those Russian users will move to other platforms and those platforms will still pay taxes on their Russian sales - which in turn helps authoritarian government. What is the difference?

Or is it just because it is harder for Russian users to make payments?

Let the politicians play politics. It's bad for business when companies decide to do that. Namecheap might have only a handful of Russian customers to afford to do that, but this won't affect just them. It will affect everyone else who will now think twice about trusting their business with Namecheap, because what's stopping Namecheap to do the same thing in the future but for a different reason? Once you cross the Rubicon, there's no going back.

Blindly distinguishing people by nationality is the first step to Nazism.

Being a Ukrainian by myself I'd like to tell you that your statement is extremely bad idea.

> Blindly distinguishing people by nationality is the first step to Nazism.

Come on now, that's not even factually correct. One of the first things the Nazis did was launch an unprovoked attack on an eastern european nation.

Thank you, Namecheap! It is really rare to see a business with human face. You are the best, Namecheap Team! (That's why I am holding my domains with you ;-) Please don't cave in to bulling now.) Слава Україні!

The vast majority of NameCheap's employees are located in Ukraine https://www.namecheap.com/careers/

Taking bets for how long until the CEO backtracks on this and says we misunderstood his intention.

I'm a Namecheap customer and I support your decision.

This virtue signaling is just plain stupid, same as the vodka boycott (FYI less than 2% of vodka in US is imported from Russia).

Yes, I wonder what % of their costumers are they canceling here vs how much they expect to get in PR.

How is that statistic in any way relevant

Is Namecheap going to be deplatforming Americans the next time the government bombs somebody? Should Chinese citizens be deplatformed for numerous human rights violations by their government?

Since they have many employees in Ukraine a better analogy would be should [X] citizens be deplatformed by company [Y] when [X] country bombs and invades company [Y].

How many of you have protested USA and boycotted their products during 78 of days of bombing of civilians in Yugoslavia in 1999? Ukraine was making statements in supports of such aggression.

This is essentially a non-governmental sanction that is severely lacking any moral basis.

If you would be directly targeting the domains of the Russian administration itself, or its main beneficiaries (oligarchs) you might have a point, but those are not typical namecheap customers I imagine.

So those affected are small businesses and citizens where you assume some type of guilt or complacency simply based on them being Russian. Because indirectly they are contributing tax revenue to the regime.

That's a really low bar. If we would extend that logic and consistently apply it, Russians should be banned from healthcare and food too.

Further, the idea that all this added sanction pressure will get citizens to rise up against the regime is quite an arrogant one to make. As if risking your life to rise up is the least one can do. The pile of sanctions may even worsen the outcome and make Putin even more motivated.

I think it's a reckless, emotional, ad hoc move.

So basically you are withholding any money I've paid you in case my domains are paid through 2025 (for example).

For everyone looking for a new registrar, I suggest Porkbun, they are usually cheaper, provide the same features as Namecheap and hav excellent customer support. In support of all the innocent people affected by Namecheap's actions, I will also be transferring all my domains out of Namecheap.

Wow, cancel culture come to the nations level. Can you cancel France please, they do nasty things in Africa right now, and Black Lives Matters. But anyway, breach of contract pretty nasty thing, you will probably get class action ed sometimes later. Client can be a corporation with real lawyers.

They should have just said Ukraine was harboring weapons of mass destruction.

If you're having trouble with the Auth Codes being incorrect during the transfer, make sure you copy them from the unformatted original e-mail (Show Original in Gmail). The codes in the HTML e-mail are unescaped, so could cut off or mangle part of the code when rendered as HTML.

I've spent a thousand+ dollars at namecheap over the years. I've been a huge cheerleader for namecheap to my cloud crazy friends because of the great value for what you pay for, and great support even for their shared hosting.

I'm not affected by this, but I won't be as evangelical as I have been. I won't be migrating away, but for my next pet project, I'll probably check another provider out.

I understand they are being emotional because they have employees there. But they should step back and realize they are just being discriminatory and mean to people that basically don't have a choice.

Should I find the closest Russian owned business in my city and protest in front so that the owner loses money? For all I know he sends money back home to his mother!

While I deeply understand Namecheap's sentiment, it still feels as a bad move to me. IMHO, net neutrality shall be above this. If not, at some point in time we are just going to have Western, Russian and Chinese internet (the latter more or less already implemented).

Russian Internet has been getting tested since at least 2019 and arguably the rest is western.

When exactly are you planning to punish our (American) political class for its war crimes and human rights violations?

How about punishing us for our operatives that began the 2014 putsch in Ukraine?

How about punishing us for Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc., etc.?

How about the drone strikes that killed an innocent family?

NO. You are exactly what is wrong in this world. Hypocrisy is fine. But, not recognizing it is just evil.

More virtue-signalling and grand-standing. Nothing more. You think that little yellow-blue flag on your site makes the world better? No. It doesn't. Recognizing the complexity of this situation would make you a better company in my eyes.

I was planning on buying myself a domain for my little self-hosted project. I am crossing Namecheap off the list of providers I was considering. Adios.

Interesting… Russian users of their Handshake tlds, too is what I am reading.

Prime example of the risk associated with using a centralized entity.

At the same time, a bold and clear move.

It's funny how human brain works (or mine anyway). Russian living in the UK, got the same email. While I hate Putin, and understand this decision, still seeing this makes me think "f*k you Namecheap and all your Ukrainian employees". Go figure.

I'm a Russian American living in the US, with family in both Russia and Ukraine. I spend hundreds of dollars a year on your services. I'm transferring my domains away from Namecheap due to this policy.

The sanctions and these types of actions don't hurt the Putin regime, they hurt individual Russians that are by a wide margin against this war and are being arrested by the thousands in daily protests.

Furthermore they ignore the geopolitical realities that underpin this war- there are no good guys here other than the civilians in Ukraine and Russia but plenty of bad guys in leadership in Russia, US and Ukraine itself that are responsible for this conflict festering for the last 20 years.

Anyone know some good registrars that have made it clear through either lack of action or statement that they're willing to keep providing service to people they find repugnant and only cease service when legally required?

Cloudflare is one of them, though they did deplatform stormfront in a fit of rage once.

Otherwise they seem pretty stand-off.

For anything critical you may want to consider multiple paths of failure and different registrars in different TLDs.

This was an embarrassing episode for that company. Matthew Prince said as much. He said something like "I did this because Stormfront claimed that we platform them because we are Nazis. It's bad that I can do this." I thought that was an especially bad look for him personally, like, if he has the presence of mind to dislike that, then he should exercise it to not take the actions he says he dislikes. Around the same time, the company also deplatformed Switter, which was in my view going beyond their legal obligations, and was also extremely disappointing.

Disclosure: I worked at Cloudflare at the time and am generally biased in favor of Cloudflare.

I'm fascinated by this world we're living in now, with its seemingly total mobilization of all aspects of life in service of some politics or another. Where does this go, ultimately? What is the end state?

In previous wars goods and services were denied to the enemy. This is no different. We leaving an unprecedented period of peace in the western world, and we don't know how to deal with it.

There used to be a time when the US and Europe were dream countries, millions of people always considered them to be the safe havens duly protected by the best laws. This made those countries prosper, as anyone who had high earnings from third world countries would immediately invest them into first world ones, the best minds would come and work there. Now everything changes quick. Russians, even anti-Putun ones figure that nobody needs them in the West, and the protections by law no longer exist. Next is the rest of the world.

Nice, now do Saudi Arabia and UAE

Incredible that Namecheap would implement such poorly conceived policy!

You’re shutting down Russian dissidents services?

You are a defacto approving of the human rights policies of all the nations that you don’t apply this policy to

You are just like the hacking group `Anonymous`.

You will target easy prey like Russia, but you would never dare to go up against your lord and master, my country, the USA -- even when it does something wrong.

I am completely in support of this. Hopefully the Russian people understand that these types of measures are not taken because we are trying to exact revenge on them as a people.

This is our way to motivate you, to encourage you to go out in major cities and protest by the millions. More so than any other profession, we in tech are often shielded from major events happening in the outside world (see pandemic). We need to get off our asses and fight for what's right because we're not living in the metaverse yet.

As this comment ([1]) demonstrates, I caution you against thinking it's safe to protest in Russia. We are truly privileged to live in a country where dissent doesn't result in being poisoned. Empathy goes a long way towards building a better world.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30506143

We know it's unsafe, we see the videos of peaceful protestors getting arrested. We knew all of this before the current conflict. And I completely agree with you that we are privileged to have these freedoms.

The ugly reality is that regime change will not happen in Russia without bloodshed, and currently the bloodshed is happening in a country that was unfortunate enough to border Russia.

The war in Ukraine is egregious and refusing to assume the risk as a Russian person is almost akin to saying "better them than us".

Sure, you're free to fight for what you feel is right. In the meantime I transfered out 25 domains. I hope you cover those for me!

This is a good move. As Ukrainian before the war broke, I tried to convince my Russian contacts to do something about it. At least publicly state that they are against the war. Exactly one (!) out of my ~50 Russian Facebook "friends" wrote a public post. Now, as my fellow citizens die under Russian bombs, I consider all who stayed silent complicit. Unless they personally feel the consequences of their government actions, Putin will continue to commit more crimes with their silent approval.

I don't think I can agree with this as a customer. I mean did namecheap block customer from US (because of Iraq/Afghanistan etc etc), France (Africa) and other countries?

This is just cheap.

Alternative services mentioned in this thread (I'm merely collecting them to one place, can't vouch for any of their future neutrality or lack thereof):

* Cloudflare

* Gandi

* Njal.la

* nic.ru (apparently the Russian state-owned registrar)

* "It's time to decentralize." https://ens.domains https://ipfs.io/

* ~~Tucows~~ see below

* Hover.com

Please add any other that you know of that you have reason to believe would remain geopolitically neutral and reliable.

Tucows apparently sent the following to "firms that the company has business ties with". While this doesn't affect customers yet, it does increase the likelihood that they'll place restrictions on customers too in the (near) future.

> We are asking you, and all of our professionals, about your firm’s policy regarding Russian clients, particularly those associated in any way with the current regime. As we imagine you know, most major Russian businesses are either directly or indirectly controlled or associated with the Russian regime.

> As you also likely know, the funds these companies and their principals, let’s just call them oligarchs, siphon off of these businesses are essentially laundered with the active support of major law firms, banks and accounting firms.

> We do not expect you to respond with a firm policy immediately BUT we do expect you to confirm in writing that you have shared this request with your superiors in a way that will most effectively lead to action and we expect you to manage our expectations as to when we may know of your firm’s position.

I created this account just to inform you that I am moving all my business away from your platform.

I would bet this causes more harm to innocent people than frustration to the Russian regime.

Why not do something more targeted? E.g. take down domains that are related to the government, propaganda, etc.

As can be seen in the HN community, Russian tech workers are the likely the least influenced by propaganda and do support Ukraine. With this service termination however, they're most impacted.

At the very least, please give people an extension. March 31? Innocent Russians are going through a lot right now.

Virtue signaling at its best.

By the same standards, Namecheap shouldn’t be doing business with customers in the USA, given the horrendous track record of aggressions started by the USA.

I believe we should start a group lawsuit against Namecheap in US courts. The damage they will make will be much, MUCH greater than a domain name renewal cost. We didn't violate a single point of the agreement and nobody of us is in US SDN list. This specific company think it can fuck a contract just because they want and we should stop this. Internet is a territory of freedom where we do not sort people.

Do it, its a good time as any to remind people that “using their platform” is a two way street

We have every right to choose who we do or don't do business with. We are a private company and are protected as such. If you need more time to move away, reach out.

You are wrong. You can decline to renew a contract but you can't just drop an active one without consequences. We will teach you to respect the law and contracts.

How do you think this will affect trust of your customers?

Not flaming, genuine question. Not Russian here though as a paying (and recommending) customer for Namecheap I can't think of the fact that someday I might be falling into a specific identity (nationality or otherwise) that Namecheap might suddenly stop doing business with even if I share the same views with NC, losing me at least hours and money for moving out of NC.

I don't see why this action would affect your decision. Factoring in the risk that a business might suddenly stop wanting to interact with you has _always_ been part of the calculus.

Private businesses are free to choose who they do business with. Getting randomly cut off has always been a possibility.

> I don't see why this action would affect your decision. Factoring in the risk that a business might suddenly stop wanting to interact with you has _always_ been part of the calculus.

Because seeing this actually play out means that everyone should update their priors about how probable those risks are? Getting randomly cut off has always been a possibility, but the probability in everyone's priors just went way up.

Not really? If you were operating in a country that has been rather openly hostile to the west and Ukraine, and you were relying on a company that was based in the west and had many Ukrainian employees, and you didn't have a contingency plan for things heating up between those countries, you weren't paying attention.

This isn't a random cutoff. This is being cut off because the country you operate in is engaging in open hostilities against another country. That should be an entirely expected and planned for scenario when hostilities are growing.

I don't know how to respond to this because you are responding to the particulars of this decision (which aren't relevant to people that don't live in Russia) without looking at what it represents.

NC's willingness to do this in this case means that everyone needs to update their priors about when else they might do something similar. When people have been historically principled about something but take an allegedly one time stance against the principle, you update your priors. I don't know what else to tell you lol.

> This is being cut off because the country you operate in is engaging in open hostilities against another country.

Why do you think I live/operate a business in Russia lol. Literally nothing I have said or done in this thread suggests that.

> NC's willingness to do this in this case means that everyone needs to update their priors about when else they might do something similar. When people have been historically principled about something but take an allegedly one time stance against the principle, you update your priors. I don't know what else to tell you lol.

My point is you wouldn't need to update anything if you had properly done your risk assessment beforehand and planned for it. Should you have planned for Ukraine and Russia going to war and this causing your business to get cut off? No, not specifically that. Should you have planned for your business potentially needing to move to a different provider on short notice? Absolutely.

> Why do you think I live/operate a business in Russia lol. Literally nothing I have said or done in this thread suggests that.

"If you were operating..."

It's a rhetorical you.

> That should be an entirely expected

So now in addition to all things I need to consider using a service from $SOMECOMPANY I should also:

check where is their registration (simple)

check where is their main office is located (not that easy)

check where is their support located (how the hell I could know)

check anything else which could be a thing two weeks later?

Do YOU knew where Namecheap hires their support?

I can only comment for myself, but as a long time NC customer, this action and the behavior of the CEO in this thread has seriously damaged my ability to trust in the brand. The only redeeming bit of trust remaining is that they are too self-interested to discard US consumers this way since the US market is too lucrative, despite any deeply untoward behaviors the US government has done in the past / continues to do.

But, you had a contractual agreement with them.

And every contract not written by a ten year old has a termination clause.

It's one of the most important parts of the contract; you should always make a point of reading it thoroughly even if you skim some of the rest.

You mean this part from https://www.namecheap.com/legal/domains/registration-agreeme... ?

>Namecheap Rights. We may reject your domain name registration application or elect to discontinue providing Service(s) to you for any reason within 30 days of a Service initiation or a Service renewal. Outside of this period, we may terminate or suspend the Service(s) at any time for cause, which, without limitation, includes registration of prohibited domain name(s), abuse of the Services, payment irregularities, material allegations of illegal conduct, or if your use of the Services involves us in a violation of any Internet Service Provider's ("ISP's") acceptable use policies, including the transmission of unsolicited bulk email in violation of the law.

I fail to see where it includes how Namecheap reacted.

The other important parts are section 2, "Changes to agreement" and section 29, "Governing law and jurisdiction for disputes".

One option is that Namecheap considers this a termination "for cause" (because they no longer want to do business in Russia). If you disagree that that is a valid cause, you agree to resolve the matter in the Arizona, without the use of a jury trial (section 29).

Another option is that they consider this a "change of agreement" "in response to changes in the requirements of governments and administrative bodies, legislation and changes in the nature of industry"; in that case, "your exclusive remedy is to transfer your domain name registration services to another registrar".

What a great thing you do, heh.

Yes, I'm from Russia, too. I've got several 2nd level domains in .com, .net, .org and .info, and I'm used to use services from registrars like namecheap, actually I was using namecheap for a couple of years in the past. What I never did is, well, I never used these .ru and .su, it is obvious local government can do anything to 2lds under these tlds. BTW, it is much much simpler to run a site, or whatever, under these tlds when you're in Russia, you can pay in local currencies, you've got consumer rights protection, you don't need to understand English (yes, many people here don't understand English), etc. Pro-putin people mostly go this way, why they would do anything else. If you're "patriotic" (in that special putin's sense) you wouldn't prefer services provided by foreigners over those available locally in Russia.

Who do use your (or other registrars like you) services are those who don't want to enable putin's secret police to shut down their sites. In fact I doubt you can find a single pro-putin russian among your customers. Those pro-putin brain-washed "patriots" mostly don't speak English and (heh, yes) don't fully understand what is DNS how the domain names work.

The people you strike at -- your customers from Russia -- are mostly those who protest against the war and get arrested by putin's police. And as of now, with all the sanctioning mess, many of them have difficulties with their bank cards, and those who only have their bank accounts in the local currency, also have to pay the transfer fees at horrifying conversion rates.

Great shot guys.

Fortunately enough, I left your services and went to another registrar several years ago.

Please remove Canadian sites too. Trudeau is a known dictator. Shouldn't you be against him committing human rights abuses? The Supreme court of NZ also found their PM was committing outrageous human rights abuses. will you block them as well? Stop acting like an arm of the US administration. You provide domains. Stay in your lane or be consistent you hypocrites.

i cant find anyone saying anything about a CEO taking a political stance when they provide a service (basically discrimination)... is nobody seeing what is happening here? History (not the propaganda) should be a clue. What did happen in Germany? a specific people were denigrated and blocked from using services no? where did it lead? people who did not fall for the barbarism and propaganda were classed as sympathisers and treated the same. it takes not a long time. Do we have to mention Gaza too, Iraq? Yugoslavia/Bosnia...there is a list a big list and guess what, its predominantly western funded to covertly/overtly.

I am immune suppressant and a vaccine could kill me but what nearly killed me was the same behaviour here from a Corporation/s who stopped me from accessing essential services. And this move is for the care and concern of people.... I will be moving to a REAL company with morals and brains. You are doing to one people what your supposedly standing up against and marketing it!

Qui Bono, what you getting out of this NC Ceo? Time will tell and there's going to be a lot of cognitive Dissonance going around soon enough.

Pathetic crony of the fascistic global capitalist overlords. Yes I'm western, Yes I can source the truth, I do not watch the spew from anything mainstream and I detest infowars, just saying.

You don't know me and I'm asking, is this legal, I think (I will be asking my Lawyer Wife) your open to claims big time and I'm sure many will hear about this approach and walk, i really hope so. I had a similar experience with a VPN service, I walked and told a hell of a lot of people. You mr/ms/LGBTQIZM CEO are a part of oppression just like the megalomaniacs on the other side.

This never stops with the beginning reasons, never! A free internet is becoming a dream. Your involved in censorship simple!

To all the Russians who think they are being inconvenienced now: Just wait.

This is a meaningless change done for the CEO/CTO's personal ego and/or PR.

This does absolutely zero to affect what is going on. ZERO.

Wow, Putin will love this. He doesn't even need to build a Great China Firewall. Corporates will do the job free for him.

I can't see how this road we are on with private companies engaging in what used to (supposedly) be affairs of estate possibly, ever, come back to bite the US on the ass.

Either the retaliation or other people deciding that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Nope. Never happen. This is a good idea that will have no repurcussions.

Dear Customer Support, have you ever personally risked your life to make a coup against authoritarian government? Look at how many Russians sit in jail for trying to speak up against Putin! These people get raped in jail, their children grow up without parents and food!

Just google “ russian jail rape leaks” and check out yourself how the Russian government treats ANYORN WHO DARES TO OPPOSE!

It’s so fucking easy to sit in a comfort of your own home in a democratic country where you don’t get killed for going against your own government!

I would be happy to take a look how you would be ready to make a coup when you have little children who will die if you get thrown in jail for joining demonstrations!

You have such a fucking one sided point of view. Use your brains for once or come to Russia and try to join demonstrations - you will get a front row seat to heaven because you will get beaten, thrown to jail, raped and killed. If you are lucky, you will only get beaten up.

Fuck you.

All I can say, Russian people both inside and outside of Russia are feeling the side effects of this. I don't blame Namecheap, been using it for 7 years probably, always had great experience. And had a feeling they were Ukrainians, solely based on the names of support agents. Will be moving my domains today.

I voted against Putin at every election I could participate. I've seen my friends detained and every protest fail.

Obviously, Ukrainians have it much worse. But we also feel stuck between a rock and a hard place. Russian countersanctions to preserve at least some of the economy are hurting us even more than the world sanctions. I've always been a bit skeptical about crypto but now it feels the only to preserve your savings. Flights, visas and immigrations programs are closing down. And even if Putin dies today (I wish), I feel like this "discrimination" will be there to stay.

As a US based Namecheap customer for over 5 years, that supports Ukraine, I will be moving somewhere else, this in my opinion is not a way to do business. Internet needs to remain free. I live in NY and Namecheap is in Arizona, will I get banned one day when Namecheap disagrees with an action by the NY government?

Well, at least my .su domain still works...

I have been with Namecheap for at least 10 years, probably much longer. Not Russian or Ukrainian or anything remotely similar. I applaud your courage and the fact that you were willing to take such a stance despite the effect this will likely have on your revenues. We need more companies like this. Thank you!

I do not doubt that many Russian citizens are appalled by the actions of their government, and certainly resisting or protesting is risky for them and incurs significant penalties. But these penalties are not remotely comparable to what is being inflicted on innocent Ukrainians. This is a situation that has resulted from 20 years of inaction and acquiescence during which an increasingly thuggish Putin and his cronies have gotten rich and been emboldened. The only solution now is for Russians themselves to change things - they need to get behind Navalny or some other opposition leader and force a change and, sorry if this is going to be costly for some of them, but those Russians complaining really need to find their balls, like Navalny, Nemtsov and others and deal with their problem. Nobody else can do this.

@NamecheapCEO I'm very angry after your email. I'm not registered in Russia, I'm not Russian, it's not my authoritarian government, but anyway you're right all west governments became authoritarian lately and committed human rights abuses against their own citizens, Canada, Italy, USA, Germany, France...... Don't get involved in political matters, politicians just follow their own interests, they don't mind anymore about their voters, they are like a flag. With your email you are declaring war to me, my company could be bring you to court or I can start a personal war. Think twice before jumping inside something much bigger than you, world wars start in that way, you are still in time. With love

Namecheap CEO from your second letter we can see that: 1. you really think that business taxes do mean something for Putin. It is totally wrong. Business in Russia exists ONLY against the government, with It's 20% and decreasing share (it is far less than in any democratic country). Putin gets his money from government run companies and he makes everything to raise their share. There are 2 reasons for him to do this: it is much easier and predictable to deal (steal) with those big companies and it is much easier to brainwash and control people, working there. And you must know that opposition financing goes from small independent businesses. If you want the proves - here they are: when Magnitsky sanctions were made against concrete people, Putin, as an answer restricted import of many goods, hurting and killing many businesses, and, therefore people. «All I wanna say he doesn’t care about us» So, acting like this you obviously help regime.

2. living in USA you think that sanctions is the way. this is the cowards' position, isn't it? instead of talking and acting with Putin himself you hurt innocent people and their families. Doesn't it look very like on his actions? Sitting in the safe underground bunker, sending missiles to civilian houses?

If you think your actions will help people start hating Putin - Not. We all hate him, suffer and willing peace. I must remember you that hundreds of thousands people united against him, leaded by Navalny, but many was poisoned, dozens are killed, thousands jailed. The opposition power was not enough, if enough Putin was defeated, isn’t it? I don't ask you where have you been when regime fighters died. It was not your war. But I ask you now - are the actions you make support the fight? How you refuse from couple of dollars will help opposition to raise again? If you want to help - send addressed money to fighters. And make it public. We have enough strong people, but the lack of resources is critical, because of the dumb sanctions idea. And the Serbian man, upthere in the comments, told you that they put down the regime only when people could accumulate resources to do that.

Help us, not Putin.

Getting hype on current events via creating inconveniences for regular people is plainly disgusting. This kind of virtue signalling is unfortunately not rare nowadays.

Disclaimer: not affected by that, moved from namecheap for other reasons (terrible service) and never regretted it.

I paid for a domain with you for a year. Transferred to another registrar, and the money stayed with you. Can I consider that you just stole my money? Covering yourself with beautiful slogans? All of us here are against the war, but you are acting like marauders.

It's the same registrar that threatened to turn off our 3000 Alexa rank site due to a defective copyright notice on one of the 30 million user subdomains! Our legal counsel had to write to them a threatening letter to buy time, and then we fled immediately.

In short period of time I will move all my domains and ded. hosting. I'm a anti war person, I hate war from bottom of my heart. I can understand your emotions, but I can't get the point that you are blocking Russian individuals and not RU government. Today you decide with emotion what will be next? I don't know. Maybe you start blocking EU citizens too simply because we will not allow Ukraine to join the European Union just like that. I see it simple - from my point of view Ukraine has big problem with corruption & low transparency in general.

Should I start to judge everyone by their religion, nationality... etc.

When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself. - Wayne Dyer

A video from 6 years ago that pretty much predicted what is happening, and why it's not as straightforward as it is made out to be https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4

been a namecheap customer since 2008, time to move all my domains.

Enough is enough for Russia and customers from there. This is just a beginning, You and your Hitler=Putin started WW3 in Ukraine. Your leader is telling the world that he is ready to nuke Ukraine or any NATo country or US if someone will try to do anything to him or help save people in ukraine that your soldiers are killing. So yea, if businesses and society won't step in and stop sponsoring Russia which is killing and bombing people, so any business that don't want to touch bloody money, they should stop providing all services to Russia. Feel the pain for not doing anything with your Hitler with nukes and causing a war in europe.

How much money did Europe paid to Putin for gas supply in last years? They are still paying him even now because they value cheap gas over human lives.

Don't try to play saint card, West is also responsible for sponsoring this bloodshed

Russia is a fantastic supplier of gas and petroleum. What's your point here.

I find it morally troubling that we accept sanctions and private company trade withdrawals like this, yet we clamor about the evil of collective punishment. It's a matter of degree, not kind, and where do we draw the line?

I'm incredibly proud to have Namecheap as my domain registrar. I wish there was more business I could send your way. Not many companies would stand this their staff in this way. Thank you Rick and everyone else! --Martin

Great idea! Now go through public records and deplatform the deplorables. Use the "off platform behaviour" code that is so very progressive of you.

I hope I have nothing registered with you, but obviously you cannot be trusted.

I don't agree with this, businesses and regular people buy domains, if you want to ban government accounts or affiliated accounts that's one thing but to kick people in such a short notice is not ok

OK, I just spent $150 transferring domains to GoDaddy. Considering this was forced by Namecheap's actions, which are "definitely not deplatforming", I can surely expect reimbursement?

Ticket ID #CWL-599-95208

Also, what about getting money for domains paid in advance? I've had a domain paid until May 21, 2026, as I've trusted Namecheap (my oldest domain name with them was registered on Jun 30, 2015). Some domain zones I used for development purposes (cheap .cyou offer) cannot be transferred to reputable registrars like GoDaddy. What to do about those?

If anybody is wondering, they've declined reimbursement of any kind.

As a Namecheap user for nearly a decade now, I support this decision. Perhaps you should have given 14 days - but other than that relatively minor point you absolutely made the right call here.

Why punish people normal people for what their government is doing.

It's not like they can choose their government.

Namecheaps own government is still drone bombing people and invading whom ever they want. Should we ban American citizens from foreign services?

No. Just ban anything related to the government, not normal people.

I have Russians at my company, should I fire them because of their ethnicity? Clearly not, that's discrimination at least in my country (applied to companies as well)

I'll be moving my 50 domains from namecheap to a less politically motivated company.

I am your customer. You have requested me to move my domain to another provider.

I condemn this regime's war against Ukraine, and I will comply with your request. It is a small inconvenience compared to a disastrous tragedy that is happening before our eyes.

But you could provide us with a way to pay some sum instead of transferring our domains, so that you could donate to provide humanitarian relief to the suffering people of Ukraine. It's a bit dangerous to donate directly, you know.

Time to create a decentralized registrar. Is that even possible?

I have been a Namecheap customer for over 10 years and use them for my business websites. I will be moving away from them. I do not support Russia because I am vehemently anti-war, especially after what I've seen my own country do to countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. However, I cannot support a business that will target and cancel customer based on their race or ethnicity. Who knows who will be the next group that is targeted and canceled.

Completely understandable, within their rights, and highly symbolic. With so many Ukranian employees, what else would the CEO do? Sadly, though, it's just another punitive act that will hurt more people than it will help. Not clear that doing something is always better than doing nothing, even in war. Whatever you do should make things better. If not, keep thinking about what you can do that will actually make a positive difference.

Understandable yes. But within their rights? I doubt so. Contracts are binding for both parties (client and the company). What they are doing here is an intentional breach of contract. Depending on the jurisdiction it can have nasty legal ramifications.

Thanks. Didn't know that. Just assumed that most tech companies' TOS includes a line reserving the right to terminate service at their sole discretion.

Terms of Service aren't necessarily legally binding - it's up to the judges to decide how much validity to give to them. Here, given they're offering refunds (and it's likely an American court that would theoretically handle this anyway), it's unlikely to have any serious consequences to the company (in legal terms).

I am not sure whether namecheap.com is sending this notices randomly to any one. I own common domain extensions like .com, .news, .io, .ai and .co. I am definitely not Russian nor anything to do with Russia, rather Indian living in Singapore. I am following with them through tickets and on twitter. They know my whois registration address and my payment card details which prove my identity. Really frustrated from morning.

Is Russia committing war crimes? That is new to me. I know of the invasion and the war, obviously, but I did not know there are war crimes being committed.

Seriously, turn on the news once in a while.

I am watching the news. The ICC is investigating potential war crimes made by Russia at the moment but no substantial proof yet. War is terrible, but there are international definitions of war crimes.

Ah, they went with a 403 status code. A couple days ago I asked about which status code was most appropriate for non-compliance/sanctions:

https://serverfault.com/questions/1094841/which-http-status-...

Perhaps there's room for a new status code?

I left GoDaddy due to their backing of SOPA years ago.[1] It appears that Namecheap is interested in political virtue signaling, and I want to de-risk. Who should I move to?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoDaddy#Backing_of_SOPA_and_re...

I think National origin and Citizenship are protected classes and by federal law. They probably should not discriminate by them.

Russian citizens should not suffer for their political leaders' decisions.

Citizens should be held accountable to their own actions.

Being neutral is an action, and so is eating propaganda.

I'm just wondering, will you apply this standard fairly to all countries? This is of course a strong argument, and if you do, I will in admiration.

However, if you are going to apply it selectively, it's not nearly as impressive.

Otherwise, if you are doing it because your country is at war with Russia, that is much better justification and is commendable.

Can't believe so-called "liberal" tech is being used to deny services to people based on their country of birth or passport. It's ridiculous to even think of such a move.

This is carpet-bombing people. Sure some Russian propaganda websites will take the hit but everyone? Don't be that fool. Stop misusing your power.

Poorly thought out policy (migrate domains in 1 week?) made in the heat of the moment when everyone has a better place to be directing their attention. Expect a reversal within 72 hours but a permanent loss of customer trust (I have five domains with Namecheap but for the first time ever I’m now wondering if that’s smart).

In most governments that work where people can affect change these kinds of squeezes and the sanctions might even lead to a coup or real change ... but what I know about Russia is that Putin's grasp on power is so iron-clad that nothing will change. This only hurts innocent bystanders.

Nobody wins in a war only the arms dealers do.

I expect you to do the same for US, GB or IL nationals when their governments invade yet another mid-east country.

Are there any official sources for this? I did a quick google search and couldn't find any announcements.

I just received the same email.

Good for them, moving to nic.ru

Namecheap sent this email to Russian customers.

That seems logical however I also got the email and I'm British, with zero links to Russia, no russian tlds/hosting, absolutely nothing, all my domains registered in England.

Strange, should not have gone to you. Sorry about that.

I also got an email: https://twitter.com/antonmedv/status/1498407020864675843

To add more to this, you can bypass their 2factor. This alone told me more about their service than anything.

Reportedly, half a million refugees are fleeing the war in Ukraine.

I agree with Namecheap stopping service of Russian domains.

This is just wrong, morally. Most of their Russian users don’t even support this war.

This discrimination has to stop.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I think this is very problematic in the case of DNS, because it is so important as a backbone of communication.

(I am by no means a networking expert. My understanding is that while people can run DNS servers of their own, they still must ultimately register their domain name somewhere.)

First, I worry this will increase Russian users' exposure to monitoring and censorship by the regime. After all, if all foreign DNS services do this, Russian customers will have no alternative but Russian DNS services, which will be far more vulnerable to control and/or infiltration by the government. Won't the government be able to tap local DNS providers to see which IP addresses are looking up dissident sites? Won't it be able to track who is looking up email address domains? Perhaps who is sending what emails to who?

Helping people obtain DNS service _outside_ Russian jurisdiction seems more damaging to the Putin regime.

Second, communication is of particular importance in its nature, even when some of the parties are abhorrent. Communication enables and fosters debate and learning. It provides access to alternative sources of information, of particular importance in a propaganda state like Russia. DNS is basically a phone book that enables contact among parties, right? If all DNS providers take the view of Namecheap these Russian parties are thrown out of the phone book. There is no communication with them, no exchange of ideas or information, no possibility of reasoning with them or changing their mind.

It is in the nature of communication that sometimes the people you are communicating with are fascist militaristic assholes. Even if we could reliably determine who those assholes are (I grant, right now it's pretty clear), cutting them out of the conversation entirely doesn't seem good for anyone. The assholes can't learn what they're doing wrong if they aren't talking to anyone else. And sometimes (again, unlikely to be this time) it turns out that _we_ are the asshole.

Third, it isn't clear how bright these lines really are. I grant, right now it's quite clear that Russia is a bad actor. But what about about China, with its treatment of the Uighurs and Hong Kong? Or the US with its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan? (Which, btw, I supported.). Or Israel, Iran, Pakistan, India -- about any one of which someone could (and does) plausibly argue is engaged in crimes against humanity. Once we start kicking people out of the "you can talk" club, we'll be endlessly arguing which people to kick out. Better not to start.

It won't do to say, "they can get domain name service from someone else". If _all_ providers take this position, these players are out of the conversation. And if this is the right position, all providers _should_ take this position.

I deplore what Russia is doing in Ukraine and hope its invasion fails. I hope the Putin regime collapses to be replaced by a truly democratic one. And I'm all for economic sanctions generally -- stop buying Russian energy, stop banking transactions, stop buying their goods. By all means, stop helping Russia finance its invasion.

But communication is a special case. I think this kind of exclusion is contrary to human communication, and potentially bad for Russian dissidents. I hope Namecheap will reconsider.

War should not be about issues outside of war. Even Rome accepted enemy athletes into the Olympics.

Namecheap CEO, I have two simple questions for you: 1) Would you do this if the revenue from Russian users was 50% of the total revenue? 2) Wouldn't it be more effective if you use the revenue from Russian users to help Ukraine or hire an assassin for Putin?

An American company punishing citizens for their country's crimes is the most stupid, naïve and self righteous thing I've ever seem.

Go ahead and to the same to the rest of clients who are citizens of war criminal countries.

Good luck with the 15 remaining users.

Taking my shit out of Namecheap too.

Brazilian citizen here.

Most staff and engineers are Ukrainian and are getting shelled by the country your officials openly support. Read the reply from Namecheap's CEO.

I read it, can't see how the Russian population is to blame. And I to be blamed for the fascist my fellow Brazilians put in power? Are regular American citizens to be blamed and punished for their leaders war crimes?

You are certainly to blame for not understanding the situation and lashing out on a person that is obviously worried about their employees, and doing what they can to put pressure, even if by proxy, on the shelling and killing their friends, colleagues, and employees.

> Are regular American citizens to be blamed and punished for their leaders war crimes?

Whataboutism is unnecessary and the answer is I can't see any reason as to why not.

i cant find anyone saying anything about a CEO taking a political stance when they provide a service... is nobody seeing what is happening here? History (not the propaganda) should be a clue. What did happen in Germany? a specific people were denigrated and blocked from using services no? where did it lead? people who did not fall for the barbarism were classed as sympathisers and treated the same. it takes not a long time.

I am immune suppressant and a vaccine could kill me but what nearly killed me was the same behaviour here from a Corporation/s who stopped me from accessing services. And this move is the care and concern of people.... I will be moving to a REAL company with morals and brains.

You’re blaming ordinary citizens of Russia for a war they did not choose.

These citizens have very little freedom of speech (because Putin) yet you ask them to speak up.

Would you speak up if you lived in Russia and knowing that you could be abducted in the middle of the night and tortured?

I guess Namecheap is on my list of opinionated companies ie they are in notallowedlist now.

Also some things to think about:

People who don't have access to their e-mail right now wouldn't even know they would be "asked to move". In the 21st century this probably means people who can't read the e-mail are in the hospital, e.g. after a traffic accident or on a ventilator with COVID. Imagine going to coma/whatever around Feb 15, recover somewhat in the first weeks of March to encounter all your digital life was wiped from the Internet (despite being paid on time).

People who hosted their e-mail on a domain hosted on Namecheap would lose the ability to receive the e-mails (if for any reason wouldn't make it in time), which could greatly complicate the whole moving process. Giving the NamecheapCEO gave only 5 day to move out this is pretty contradicts their "please kindly fuc^W get out".

Given the majority of Namecheap support is located in Ukraine I highly doubt all these "[Russians,] contact us, we'll make exceptions" would go well.

And finally, riding a high horse is always good, but I doubt NamecheapCEO paid 1700 Ukrainian employees the same salary he would paid to 1700 US employees. Sure, this is not "Don't cut in my profits", but while the horse is high - it stinks.

EDIT: oh, and I really want them to publish the stats on how many people moved the domains from them in the next week, with at least Russia/non-Russia owned break-up.

But something tells me we wont see that.

EDIT2: Ha! To add insult to injury the guy could be literally locked up for actively participating in protests against the war![0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30505604

It's like they don't have enough problems as it is, they also want to annoy clients and destroy their own business. Their choice. Even if they reconsider it's a good idea to move anyway, such behavior makes them extremely unreliable.

For all the innocent people across the world that just want to go along to get along while "us vs. them" thinkers close in from all sides, I just want to say that I empathize with you all. You're not alone.

oh thanks for the reminder to move off all my domains.. this proves my intuition right namecheap smells exactly like godaddy or w/e. Glad I do this cause who knows maybe our leaders will invade somebody and all of the sudden I'll be having another headache on top of everything else. Talking about human rights while you're abusing them by denying service to people that have absolutely no ties to their goverment but gods rnd dice rolled them into a certain country which happens to go in war with another.. pardon me but that's just stupid

For a company that is basically run from Ukraine, this is mildly worded.

Cheap company, cheap move. You totally don’t get it. What a shame!

Has anyone tried to submit a complaint to ICANN?

https://www.icann.org/complaints-office

Well done sir. Thank you for standing up for your employees.

Well, this is quite bad service. Only a week to transfer...

Even if they did not do this, how would you pay for Namecheap considering all the banking related blocking? How can Namecheap comply with the new sanctions?

until you understand that it is not countries and peoples that are at war, but elites are at war - you will continue to be a victim of your false beliefs.

There are quite literally people at war here, not elites, hundreds of thousands of them from Russia rolling into another country with tanks, artillery, guns, mines, missiles, bombs, and so on. In that other country there are hundreds of thousands of people fighting back with their own set of the above weapons, and improvised ones like Molotov cocktails. There are hundreds of thousands or millions displaced from their homes. There are millions sleeping in bomb shelters (if they have access), or the next best thing (basements, hallways away from windows, etc) hoping that they won't be killed in the night.

This war was started at the behest of an elite, Putin, but it is carried about by ordinary people, it is resisted by ordinary people, it's impacts are felt by ordinary people, it can be stopped by ordinary people.

This is an attack on the Russian citizen, a normal person who works a normal job.

I do not agree that the valid response is to hurt innocent bystanders. FU namecheap.

Thank you Namecheap!

Perhaps a better solution would have been to offer free service to Russian people. Connectivity is the best strategy against dictatorship.

I support your stance on this. looking forward for you to stop providing services to Israel, Saudi Arabia, USA, for the same resons.

Now they've painted a target on their back (just like Epik). Let's see how long until someone leaks their data.

I'd suggest hover.com / tucows as an alternative provider that isn't doing these actions.

Somehow I have a feeling that such acts will only turn the supportive Russian citizens against Ukraine.

Really? That sounds very petty to start supporting a violent invasion of a sovereign nation because you had to switch registrars.

I fully support the decision. My perspective about regular people of Russia and if they should be sharing the responsibility for the war in Ukraine here: http://nywkap.com/politics/russian-responsibility.html

We (the West) just vaporized half of Russia's GDP. This seems like small beans.

Interesting. Didn't expect Namecheap would start looking like a forbidden fruit

This is quite unprofessional of them. Unless the jurisdiction specifically forbids it, taking sides like this and kicking out their paying customers with little notice is nothing but opportune posturing that reeks of deplatforming. Don't take out your grievances on already subjugated population.

This isn't a business or political issue for them. See the response from the CEO in this discussion. They have employees on the ground in Ukraine who's lives are in danger right now. Given that, I understand why they are not that concerned about the fairness of it.

This is the real consequences of cancel culture. It's convenient until it comes up against your own personal beliefs.

Cancel culture doesn't usually involve government war crimes. I am anti woke myself but pro genocide I am not.

My wife is Ukranian. Thank you for what you're doing.

This is “better that the innocent suffer than to support the guilty” reasoning.

"We're not deplatforming you, but basically, you can't use this platform, and if you were, please get off the platform"

This is truly the darkest timeline. What happened to "information wants to be free"? Your just participating in making yet another gulag archipelago.

Next step: Send all Russian employees home to fight against the regime.

Is this covered by the ToS or are they making things up as they go?

Yes, always punish a population for the actions of their leaders.

i wonder what other countries have gotten this treatment? as an american, should i worry about getting kicked off my webhost the next time we start a war of aggression?

Cuba?

Can you redirect traffic to anti-propaganda news articles :)

well im not russian but perhaps i should take my domains off namecheap nonetheless. punishing innocent civilians?? fuck this loser virtue signalling ceo

6 days is not much time to give people to move.

Namecheap is just being cheap. With all the racist extremist groups on your server, it is with the common russian resident that you want virtue signal?

How stupid these big corps are spliting the world. That's why each country should develop their own Internet Infrastructure.

This is going to crush the opposition and demoralize these people even more while it will have zero effect on Putin.

база с возу, кобыле легче

Is this allowed by ICANN?

Yay good for you

ICANN + lawsuit

Oh no...

WWWW1

Isn't it a discrimination based on nationality? We're a small company in Russia and things are already hard for us. And now this. We do not support Putin or his war, why hit on us?

They are targeting users in Russia, not Russians.

Ultimately, people in Russia are paying taxes towards this war, and have some responsibility for their government.

I am from Switzerland. Got an email too: https://twitter.com/antonmedv/status/1498407020864675843

Because I'm Russian, I guess?

Shouldn't be the case, please reach out to our support and we'll rectify it.

I'm in the US, also got the email.

Reach out, we'll get this fixed

This is what the beginning of economic stagnation looks like and how regime change is forced upon Russia (again). It could be worse, though. You could have a nuclear power rolling tanks through your neighborhood trying to decapitate your government and install a puppet.

I agree that Russia is violating International law, and possibly committing war crimes at this very moment. But why don’t we apply the same standard to US or China when they do it?

I am not talking about boycotting or private businesses refusing to serve people from a country. I mean sanctions proportional to the damage!

No one would ever put sanctions on the USA no matter what we did. We could invade a country and occupy it for years, or totally destroy its government. We could drop nukes on it. Oh wait we did all these things.

Just as one example that was condemned by the UN: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Pa...

The USA would never allow anyone to do to us what we routinely do to them. Imagine if USA were to, I dunno, attempt to invade a neighboring country, carve out a piece for ourselves, and then that country would ask Russia for help and Russia would put nuclear missiles on it…

Oh wait. Cuba. Bay of pigs invasion. Guantanamo. Cuban missile crisis…

Shoe on other foot for USA means unacceptable.

Imagine if Russia started arming “moderate rebels” against the president of Mexico, and they wound up joining the Zetas and Sinaloa cartel, and taking control of entire cities in Mexico. Russia would say we are propping up a brutal dictator who is cracking down on drug gangs brutally. Imagine Russian weapons would be used by drug gangs to kill Mexicans.

What would USA do? We all know.

Imagine if Russia started an alliance to “contain US expansion” into Central and South America and sign up countries that have historical grievances with US doing stuff like, I dunno, trainingg rebels and overthrowing their governments. Maybe start with Nicaragua and Panama, then gradually get closer.

Would the USA allow this? Shoe on other foot.

George W Bush was a worse actor than Putin by far. And got zero sanctions. He still gets to joke around and give speeches after large swarhs of the entire middle east were destroyed. Remember that guy campaigned on NO NATION BUILDING! Unbelievable

The world is fixated on Putin invading Ukraine and possibly doing regime change there. They are united in imposing extremely harsh sanctions that will affect the people of Russia. While USA Presidents have done far worse things just in the last 20 years, and the world doesnt really have a say… means we are above international law baby !!!

So, all this about “we would accept sanctions” please. We have privilege. The biggest baddest kind of privilege. White privilege is nothing compared to AMERICAN privilege baby.

I will leave China as an exercise to the reader. I will say this though… in the US we have freedom of speech, so people like myself and Noam Chomsky can live here AND openly speak the uncomfortable truth about what our country has done. Russians and Chinese can’t.

So in that respect, USA is far better.

I am from a third party country that has absolutely nothing to do with this war, but my thought after seeing Russian civilians complain about these policies is that, they should stand up, go out of their home and complain to their government.

The reason why all the world is doing this is because their freaking leader (Putin) has threatened nuclear war, and is pushing for war, invading a country. Like... hello? you have no business in any international matter (finance, sport, gaming, internet, etc) until you fix your shit in your country.

So yeah, I am happy that this thing is making Russian civilians uncomfortable. Hopefully they will be uncomfortable enough so that millions of Russian citizens raise their voice and stop this madness, before it is too late.

putin is supposedly bunkered up in ural. not sure that population can actually achieve something. best shot is putin's sudden death from "stroke"

So... what do you think will happen if everybody (including bureaucrats) went on strike until the war/invasion ended?

absolutely nothing. part of population is brainwashed, but in general given economy that just crashed, you can't get lower than 0... also in general, amount of stuff that is actually produced in russia... you hardly can get lower even if you strike

In some places including Russia, there is punishment for speaking up and trying to fix things.

Which is why it's hilarious that Russian state propaganda says that Ukraine is a dictatorship and that they are there to liberate them. LOL

> Which is why it's hilarious that Russian state propaganda says that Ukraine is a dictatorship and that they are there to liberate them. LOL

It stopped being "hilarious" when that propaganda became the justification for a literal invasion, and now good people have to do this: https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000008230025/u..., https://www.nytimes.com/article/russia-invades-ukraine-photo....

> In some places including Russia, there is punishment for speaking up and trying to fix things.

If that's the case, I suppose another option is to get out and brain-drain Russia.

There is no attainable work visa and permanent residence permit for the masses. Nor one that covers sick elderly parents.

> There is no attainable work visa and permanent residence permit for the masses. Nor one that covers sick elderly parents.

There's no perfect response here that covers all the bases and solves everything nicely.

A state that came about because of complacency in the face of eroding freedoms. Now that state is being taken advantage of to fatally punish people who have even less ability to fix things and no option to disengage.

Unfortunately, it seems like mass protests are the best option at this point. Otherwise, Russia and the world will suffer.

> you have no business in any international matter (finance, sport, gaming, internet, etc) until you fix your shit in your country.

Seriously, what kind of argument is this?

Have you risked your own life to complain against a dictator? I don't know, maybe you have. But >99% of the people in the West haven't.

Who are you to tell another random person, who (to the best of our knowledge) hasn't done anything wrong, that they need to do that (and succeed at it, no less!) in order to enjoy "sport, gaming, internet" and other things we take for granted, just because they happened to be born in Russia?

I'm from the West myself, with no relation to Russia except for some acquaintances, and despise Putin and his brutal invasion. But honestly I don't know what is the larger threat towards everything the West represents, Putin's nukes or attitudes like this (I picked your comment but there are many like it in this thread...). Denying individuals a normal life based on their place of birth and things that aren't their fault at all is just evil.

> Seriously, what kind of argument is this?

Whataboutism.

It's become the main pro-Putin talking point in the last couple of days, after an abrupt drop-off when the last one (Russia will never invade, Biden is a madman, etc) abruptly stopped working.

It's not really based on their place of birth? If you are a Russian outside Russia without using a Russian bank account I don't think this will effect you.

Emigration is not something that should be required of a random person, though. And it can even be impossible. Tech people have it easier than average, but for most people obtaining a visa and work permit for a foreign country is out of reach.

So while "place of birth" is not the exact criterion, the fact is that many Russian people are effectively being targeted by this kind of measures due to the single "sin" of having been born in Russia.

> So yeah, I am happy that this thing is making Russian civilians uncomfortable. Hopefully they will be uncomfortable enough so that millions of Russian citizens raise their voice and stop this madness, before it is too late.

Is there a strong precedent for this? The USSR did fell due to economic hardships but a lot of factors are different when we consider Russia. A Russia with a destroyed economy will probably be just another country under Chinese sphere of influence.

> So yeah, I am happy that this thing is making Russian civilians uncomfortable

You can't post like this here, regardless of how strongly you feel or how right the side you're on is.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30505468.

Initially my comment was that i approve of this. We need to calm down. Some russians are also a victim of putin. While from the comfort of my arm chair is easy to demand that russians show the same bravery as ukranians and topple their dictator, the reality is different.

We need to let our governments take drastic action, and sure, us as citizens stand up to anyone in support of putin and the war but not issue blanket bans and private sanctions.

We dont want to create the conditions of the first world war where innocent germans were punished for actions they were not responsible for, led to misery and was later on used as propaganda. Many in Russia dont even understand the enormity of what is happening, and that includes some here on this forum. Yes you can be well educated and highly paid and still not understand that russia has attacked humanity itself in the name of long gone glory and pride.

As such i would kindly ask that namecheap changes this policy and applies it only to those customers that display clear support for the putinists (i.e. government entities, propaganda farms, money launderers and so on).

Remember, Germans were the first casualty of the nazis.

I stand for ukraine, but i stand for freedom loving russians too.

Right now, the most important action that the West can take is military aid to Ukraine. Ideally, direct air support, but even equipment helps. If the invasion ultimately fails, it's unlikely that Putin will remain in power for long. Not because of any revolution, but because the Russian elites themselves will pin everything on him.

With government and private sanctions, it really depends. Some (e.g. disconnecting SWIFT) will be a major pain in the ass for the elites. Others, like this one, really only hurt the population at large, and the govt propaganda is going to tap into this big time.

I will respond to this one.

It's good that you tried to fight the regime. Clearly it wasn't enough.

You live in society, not in the woods. The majority decides how all live - like in any other country. In your country majority decided not to overthrow dictatorship. As result, minority suffers. So here is your answer.

So from your perspective it is ok to generalize and discriminate the minority? Sorry, but how are you better than Putin then?

Bystanders living in Russia are defacto supporting the regime by paying taxes, working, buying goods, etc.

Leaving isn’t free, but it’s much safer than protesting inside Russia.

Leaving isn't just expensive, but there are also matters such as visas.

But not as complicit as say the German government, which is controlled by a much smaller number of people and made a disproportionally larger contribution to the Russian war coffers.

How is he better than Putin? I think it’s safe to assume he never invaded a sovereign nation? (Or murdered any journalists, or shot down a passenger jet, or murdered political rivals, or bombed apartment blocks, or attacked foreign elections, or sponsored mercenary groups to overthrow African governments)

but the narrative is the same. if minority disagrees it’s ok to fuck them over.

If you genuinely believe that russian people chose to live under the dictatorship, then following the same logic you could say that african-americans chose to live in slavery. Does it also sound reasonable to you?

The statement “oh well, you are a minority, so you deserve to be discriminated” is quite an ignorant thing to say. Don’t you think so?

>"I think it’s safe to assume"

No it is not. Do a little research and you will find the examples of everything mentioned.

do my research on what? on russian dictatorship? on logic? on slavery? lol If you see inconsistency in my reasoning, I’m happy to hear your criticism, but not lazy “go do research”, coz you have nothing to say

>"I think it’s safe to assume he never invaded a sovereign nation? (Or murdered any journalists, or shot down a passenger jet, or murdered political rivals, or bombed apartment blocks, or attacked foreign elections, or sponsored mercenary groups to overthrow African governments)"

West done most of the above.

The passenger jet example isn't the best, since the US shot down a passenger jet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

Most of people here has no any experience of fighting against even a soft authoritarian regime. You just don't have a clue how it looks like where the police officers beat you in the chamber in the night and you are screaming and nobody help you, they torture you putting a bottle in your anus and smashing your teeth. It's completely immoral to blame people they are fighting not enough, you don't know NOTHING about it.

I mean, nobody does, right? We’re all quite comfortable enough even with a regime in charge. Not much to be gained by the individual if they keep putting their head on the block.

Those missiles that are killing 6 year old girls aren't building themselves and paying for themselves. I respect that it's tough, but you have to respect this company's right to do the things you can't or aren't willing to do.

Did you hear about the starving children in Yemen? Or they don't count because not European or "white?"

Whataboutism and cheating at the Olympics. You could tell me the year is 1982.

My sympathies, these are hard times and there are very few absolutes. I really hope that at least someone in a position to make a difference will do so and soon because the clock is running out for lots of people if that doesn't happen.

Note that you are closer to the point of origin so people will automatically assume that you have more agency than they do. Some people in Russia are already taking action, depending on how many will stand with them they may succeed, there is ultimately safety in numbers, you can't jail a whole country.

Right, which is exactly why companies / other nations / etc are having to step in to stop the Russian regime, because clearly the Russian people can't / won't.

Good @Russian, I wish nothing but peace for Russians and Ukrainians. We must stand together against our autocratic profit and war-driven regimes. Especially here in the US.

I live in Ukraine, I was on Maidan in 2014. So I know how it is.

Russians on the other hand don't. The are constantly afraid while in Ukraine we are ready to risk lives for freedom and democracy.

You can't post like this to this forum. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30510198.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30506315.

Yes, it's all very unfortunate that you have some additional work to do.

In all seriousness, you need to take a step back and realize that this is a minimal price that we all have to pay, that includes those of us in the western world, to enjoy the freedoms that we have every day.

The current events have a negative impact on the entire world, and it's already bad enough that we have let it get this far and a country found itself defending democracy for the entire world.

Additional work?

In the west I think we need to realize that the situation is extremely unfortunate for Russians that are victims of the dictatorship (vs. those that actually believe in the party line), who have no easy way out of the country, and are absolutely screwed ATM.

Obviously worlds better than being under fire in the Ukraine, but I wouldn't throw the average Russian in the "minimal price we all have to pay" bucket.

Comparatively everyone in the west has it real easy (for now at any rate).

Yes, they do have to pay a higher price, because the problem stems from there and they now have a small window opportunity for a regime change.

They are at a point where they can reach critical mass. If we don't push enough this can be dragged out to a North Korea like status, and that is going to be a lot worse for everyone.

> minimal price that we all have to pay, that includes those of us in the western world

I was talking to a Russian friend recently who also mentioned trying to stockpile some food while it was affordable, just like the parent commenter. I think telling the average Russian citizen that their food insecurity is a minimal price they have to pay comes off as a bit smug.

The point is that this has to happen for change to occur from within. Change of regime from outside with be far more disastrous to the Russian people.

What if the regime doesn't change though? I hate to say it but if China invaded Taiwan tomorrow and every western tech company started banning Chinese users, 99% of them wouldn't even notice. By rushing to deplatform an entire nationality without nuance we're accelerating the decline of western tech hegemony and won't have any more cards to play if things get worse. A more sensible approach would be sanctions on elites while maintaining pipelines of information to Russians. If Russians get cut off from the world they will become more like North Koreans.

There's certainly a possibility that change will not happen, but this is the best chance we have without escalating it to a world war.

Sanctions on elites have not caused regime change in other authoritarian regimes, we have even less reason to believe that it would happen with this one.

Russian people need to see that they are at a crossroads, and if they don't act in this narrow time window by organizing and protesting by the millions, they may indeed end up like North Korea.

It's really interesting that you point out that "sanctions on elites" have not worked, but seem to assume that general sanctions have. Do you have any example where they have worked? We've got plenty of examples where they haven't.

South Africa

Thank you: this is the sole example that I've seen where there is, at least, a correlation. Does not convince me that it's a generally applicable tool.

Still didn't end up in an overthrow of the regime, but rather regime recognizing that writing is on the wall, but definitely could be a case in point.

The West's threat against China is that they would stop importing their goods. A coordinated action like what we're seeing against Russia would completely crash China's export-driven economy. I doubt the CPC could weather that (or at least, I doubt the current leaders of the CPC could weather that).

I agree we shouldn't try to cut off the Russian internet, they need access to non-government-sanctioned information. But the economic sanctions need to apply to everyone in the country - if nothing else, it reduces Putin's ability to wage (expensive) wars. It sucks.

And the Ukrainians who are dead or have had their homes and communities bombed? Who are now refuges or fighting for their life and country?

I don't think it's an either/or thing; I think it's possible to have empathy for both anti-war Russian citizens, and Ukrainian citizens.

You can have empathy while still taking the punitive steps that need to be taken on the country as a whole.

The desired outcome is clear: Russia gets government replaced and war stopped.

The debate is on what steps "need to be taken". I don't take it as gospel that sanctions which will mostly affect non-war-engaging people are one of those steps, yet I am not sure what evidence any sanctions-supporting people have that it really works.

If sanctions negatively impact the Russian economy as a whole, resulting in a long-term reduction in its ability to wage conventional war, then that's a benefit regardless of whether regime change occurs.

Why are you concerned with long-term reduction of Russian war-faring capability? How is that relevant to this situation?

If I believe that would help, I would only be concerned with their immediate reduction of war-faring capability and replacement of their government with a more reasonable one, but none of that seems likely to be achieved with sanctions. And I hope we are not in this for the long run, because I am pretty confident Russian army can keep this up for a number of years.

FWIW, I would hope for the same in regards to all the countries in the world: for their governments to be more reasonable, to do less lying, and to start no wars.

> Why are you concerned with long-term reduction of Russian war-faring capability? How is that relevant to this situation?

I’m concerned with all time scales in this situation. And I think steep economic sanctions can be relevant to all of them.

Whether you ascribe to it or not a lot of people (in the west, especially) have been jolted into now seeing this conflict through an ideological lens. That means long term strategic steps are being put into play. There is a lot more being considered now than just the short term, though I think most everyone also wants the immediate war to resolve with minimal loss of life — and I don’t see those twin goals as being in conflict at this point in time.

I don't see how this isn't anything but virtue signalling, and forcing citizens to bear the cost.

Being cut off from the rest of the world's financial system, and with a collapsing ruble, not to mention a failing financial sector, how do you think people are going to find alternative infrastructure providers? What critical infrastructure will this take offline? What untold damage will this cause to civilians that have effectively no say against their authoritarian government?

It's one thing for governments to be handing down sanctions and interrupting "business as usual", as that is their perogative and they are accountable to their citizens by way of voting. In my opinion, though, it is another thing entirely to celebrate businesses acting in ways to inflict the most suffering possible on the people least able to handle such abuse. There is no accountability there.

The accountability happens when the pressure the Russian people feel as a result of the actions their leadership has taken is greater than they can bear, and they replace their leadership in response.

"Pressuring" civilians into standing up to armed interior police willing to use lethal force and torture, in order to effect regime change, seems of questionable morality.

We change regimes in democracies by voting.

They change regimes in autocracies by dying.

That doesn't feel like a fair expectation.

Can you elaborate? I'm not sure how you think regime change in autocracies can happen any other way. It's not like autocrats listen to people and go, "my bad; I'll change my direction now." History suggests that only violent overthrow can effectuate that, with a few exceptions where a foreign invader was able to execute the autocrat, or where the autocrat knew they were backed into a corner and the choice was to flee or be killed. Either way, it's violent and terrible.

As Clausewitz said, "war is politics by other means."

The vast majority of autocracies were overthrown by eroding their power bases.

"The people" are not one of Putin's power bases.

I.e., see financial sanctions.

Life isn't fair. Russia invading Ukraine wasn't fair.

In order to change the government of a dictatorship, someone would need to take the initiative to overthrow the government. This could be ordinary people, but the military or elites would have the best chance of pulling it off. But, there needs to be some pressure to change, or everyone will keep muddling along as things are.

I am not sure you could make this statement and also be consistent.

For example, are you in favor to repeal the American with Disabilities Act. What about repealing Medicaid ? or to end progressive taxation ?

If any of your answers is no, then you aren't being consistent, and it is likely that re-examining your position is warranted.

??????????????

How did you pick those particular things??? What???????

Edit: Oh, I think I get it, you're conflating "Sometimes there is no fair solution." with "Nobody should ever try to be fair." or something like that. That's a ridiculous argument, then.

> it is another thing entirely to celebrate businesses acting in ways to inflict the most suffering possible on the people least able to handle such abuse

No one is celebrating, I assure you. The crumbling economy, all of the restrictions, their children captured abroad, all these facts amount to a serious conversation amongst Russian people that can lead to a critical mass of people going into the streets and protesting. Look at December 1989 Romania, for a textbook example of people pushed too far with nothing to lose, taking matters in their own hands. It can happen again, but not so long as the Russian people don't feel the sting. It needs to be delivered fast and hard for people to trust that the great majority is with them.

I notice there is a lot of they in your statement.

What about you ?

Was Romania under any sanctions at the time?

People do overthrow lousy governments. I have yet to see proof that it happens as a consequence of sanctions.

Sanctions lead to people scrambling for survival, and those in power profiting further.

If sanctions are worthless, would you rather all the sanctioning countries militarily invade Russia and take out Putin and all the oligarchs? That was what used to happen when countries had wars with each other. Won't ordinary Russians suffer even more than having to move their domain names to a local provider?

Should belligerent countries be able to invade any country they want and suffer no consequences? You seem to be advocating for no consequences and having Ukrainians constantly die in a war just so the average Russian isn't inconvenienced

What is actually your alternative suggestion that you think will have real world and quick effects?

I am saying that sanctions on Russia will not affect any Ukranians dying or not. They will strictly make Russian "common people" suffer, and won't hurt their political elite either, and will likely make it stronger.

A way to remove any pre-text for wars like these is to allow secession by the UN, and to specifically allow regions (regardless of any existing drawn-up province/state borders) to split out in a democratic poll, with some costs involved (eg. repaying any investments in the region as if it was a loan, possibly land-resources tax based on percentage of GDP or something, but also some guarantees like no excessive tax on imports or visas for seceding regions).

Then there would be no Ukrainian claim on separatist-controlled regions in the East, and no Russian claim on the rest of the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk that separatists control 1/3 of.

Basically, all the wars in Europe since the 90s were strictly led about territories with majority population of a region not being majority population of the country (Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, now Ukraine). In the short term, it would have led to a bunch of "city-states", but like throughout history, they would re-unite and separate ad infinitum: as long as we can figure out a fair financial framework (that's less costly than war to all parties, otherwise, war will be resorted to anyway), there's nothing wrong about countries splitting up or reuniting.

Of course, just removing this pre-text for the war (he's "saving" Russians who live in Eastern Ukraine) might not have stopped Putin. But without knowing what "excuse" they'd come up with, I can't argue what the best course of action would have been.

The best course of action today is to recognize these realities, and work toward agreements that put this ("these parts of Ukraine are independent") into effect. That's going to be pretty hard to happen though.

There is literally no conceivable way Ukraine was ever going to remain independent as long as Putin is in control of Russia.

Everything you talked about has already been done--Ukraine gained independence and, after years of Ukraine-NATO relations, began actively seeking membership in the alliance and with the EU. For example, in 2002:

> "Ukraine's total integration into NATO is dictated by the reality of European and world politics, particularly after the tragic events of Sept. 11 in the United States," Kuchma said in a statement.

> "We are aware that joining NATO will be a long process and we will do everything possible," he added.

https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2002/07/09/Ukraine-reiterat...

Followed by a formal attempt in 2008:

> Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Parliamentary Chairman Arseniy Yatsenyuk have signed the statement calling for consideration on Ukraine`s entry into the NATO membership action plan at the Bucharest summit" ...

https://www.unian.info/world/89447-ukraine-asks-to-join-nato...

Then we get the events of 2014 in Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity where Yanukovych is kicked out because of his refusal to sign a trade agreement with the EU.

There are more than 2 decades of history pointing to Ukraine's willingness to join Europe and NATO. And this is all backed by the people, both by the election of their leaders and by force.

So literally all of this fully agrees with the entirety of your "solution." How have we ended up here?

For one, Ukraine has natural gas and oil reserves--and if Ukraine can sell that to Europe, then Europe can rely on Russia just a little bit less. This was a big part of Russia taking Crimea and eastern Ukraine. But unfortunately for Ukraine, there are reserves on the western part of Ukraine, too. If Putin wants /all/ of the reserves, the entirety of Ukraine has to go.

Secondly, Ukraine is vital in a defense of Russia from a European attack. Putin consistently brings up Cuba in his reasoning for considering Ukraine's entry into NATO an act of war.

And lastly, but perhaps most significantly, is Putin's view of the relationship between Ukraine and Russia.

https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentar...

Basically, Ukraine was a point of pride for the USSR. It was host to a significant portion of the USSR's nuclear armaments, it was an important part of the economy, had a lot of natural resources, etc. (Of course, this is all a rose-colored view of the USSR from Putin's perspective.)

And then the USSR collapsed and all of these different Soviet states gained independence--including Ukraine. Although Ukraine and Russia continued to share their culture, and their people continued to go back and forth over the two countries' borders, Ukraine was slowly betraying literally everything that the USSR stood for (according to Putin).

Putin doesn't see any of this as being driven by the people of Ukraine--he thinks this is all the West interfering in Ukraine's politics. He specifically says this in all of his writings and speeches; Ukraine was POISONED by the West to "betray" its Russian heritage (USSR).

Do you really think Putin would accept this: "A way to remove any pre-text for wars like these is to allow secession by the UN, and to specifically allow regions (regardless of any existing drawn-up province/state borders) to split out in a democratic poll"

When 1. that has LITERALLY already happened, and 2. Any result of such a poll would be considered the West poisoning the pride and joy of the USSR, Ukraine?

Read Putin's writings and listen to his speeches. Take the words literally and read between the lines. You'll realize that independence for Ukraine was /never/ an option so long as Putin (or his ideology) is in charge of Russia. Ukraine joining NATO was ALWAYS going to be a declaration of war. This same concept applies to Georgia.

In an okay world, both Ukraine and Georgia are what Belarus is today in its relations to Russia. "Independent" and "sovereign" in name only. In an ideal world, the USSR stands as a superpower.

------ Edits ------

This decent YouTube video describes the relationship between the two countries as "Putin is just like [Ukraine's bitter] ex." https://youtu.be/LJNtfyq3TDE [The REAL Reason Putin is Invading Ukraine] by Johnny Harris

This other YouTube video is great as well: https://youtu.be/If61baWF4GE [Why Russia is Invading Ukraine] by RealLifeLore.

You seem to be completely denying the statement (what I though of as fact, but I am happy to be corrected) that there are regions of Ukraine which have predominantly Russian population. I am talking about allowing those regions to secede and internationally recognizing their independence.

The fact that there was continuous fighting since 2014 suggests to me that neither side was satisfied with the status quo.

I've long ago given up the premise of "independence": as a Serbian citizen, I don't have any say in what happens in Kosovo, and I shouldn't have. Majority of the population there is Albanian, and the only qualm I have is that entire (what used to be) official province of Kosovo & Metohija is automatically assigned to the majority of that province, instead of allowing small parts to remain in Serbia which desire to do so. Basically, a fuller right to self-determination. (Not that I think nationalist sentiment is a net win either: what we get in cultural value is easily cancelled with all the political crap it enables)

None of that happened through any "independence", but instead through an act of war by NATO on Serbia (just like another superpower is doing it today to Ukraine, though a lot worse since they kicked off a ground invasion too). If the UN had a framework to at least offer a peaceful secession, maybe we'd see none of the war. Because we now have plenty of evidence what immutability of borders means: it means an unavoidable war when minority regions disagree with majority vote.

> You seem to be completely denying the statement (what I though of as fact, but I am happy to be corrected) that there are regions of Ukraine which have predominantly Russian population. I am talking about allowing those regions to secede and internationally recognizing their independence.

And I am telling you, specifically, that those parts of Ukraine seceding to Russia, as they want to, does not matter in the grand scheme of things. I'm telling you, using Putin's words and ideology, that Ukraine, even without Crimea, even without Donetsk, and even without Luhansk, was never going to remain fully independent. You ignored practically the entirety of my post, it seems.

This is even evident today because Russia already has Crimea. Russia already took control of eastern Ukraine.

So...what is Putin doing in Kyiv?

I don't have a response to what is Putin doing in Kyiv: it beats me, and it certainly looks like they want full control of Ukraine (but then again, they are not after all the other Western cities of Ukraine).

I can't, for the life of me, figure out what is the ultimate outcome that Putin and Russian leadership desires: if they have only invaded Eastern Ukraine, they could keep some plausible deniability aspect in relationship to Ukrainian people. The way they've done it, especially in regards to Kyiv, throws that out of the picture, and they've established an animosity that's going to last for the next 30+ years at least.

The most likely outcome so far seems to be that they definitely succeed in taking over Eastern Ukraine, and possibly succeed in taking Kyiv over... and then what? Set up a dictatorship in Ukraine while still pretending to have democracy in Russia? That can't work.

But none of that matters in this what-if discussion. Russia took control of the eastern Ukraine, but it's obvious Ukraine still had pretension on getting it back, thus engaging their military at the frontier. I don't think you can warrant we'd see this development if there was an actual internationally-recognized secession going on, which is my entire point. Even originally I acknowledge that I wasn't certain this would stop Putin, but it would stop this excuse from being used. And then we could figure out what other excuse warlords like him can come up with, and work with that.

I mostly care about considering if there are ways to avoid wars and killing to achieve what are ultimately financial motives (hidden behind nationalistic and similar reasons, because those are great crowd-influencing tools). And the only solution to me seems to be an established framework for financial compensation for "losses" for the part of the land being split off. Unfortunately, throughout history, human life has been seen as zero cost, even though it has a huge cost even in inhumane terms (eg. lost tax income and production, taxable descendants...).

Edit: you seem to be completely underestimating the value of international recognition of a separatist region. Why did Russia not recognize separatist states earlier than last week? Their own laws would probably stop them until they were "called in to help". If they were recognized internationally, Ukraine would be prohibited from engaging in war actions as well.

> The most likely outcome so far seems to be that they definitely succeed in taking over Eastern Ukraine, and possibly succeed in taking Kyiv over... and then what? Set up a dictatorship in Ukraine while still pretending to have democracy in Russia? That can't work.

Yeah, that is ultimately one of the goals. Look to Georgia and Belarus here. Basically none of these countries can ever aspire to join NATO. That's the main problem, followed by the other problems I mentioned previously. How this is achieved really doesn't matter.

> Russia took control of the eastern Ukraine, but it's obvious Ukraine still had pretension on getting it back, thus engaging their military at the frontier. I don't think you can warrant we'd see this development if there was an actual internationally-recognized secession going on, which is my entire point.

But again, I'm literally telling you, this secession is practically irrelevant to what's going on today.

Hypothetically, let's say Ukraine was insane and agreed to give up Crimea. It agreed to give up Donetsk. And it agreed to give up Luhansk. Literally for free. There are now no military conflicts between Ukraine, Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk.

Everyone is happy. Yes?

Then a day after, the entire world recognizes that Crimea is part of Russia, recognizes that Donetsk (DPR) is independent, and recognizes that Luhansk (LPR) is independent.

Everyone is happy. Yes?

Then, another day later, Ukraine goes back to applying for membership into NATO.

Russia would invade Ukraine. That is a fact.

That's the problem with everything you're saying.

Yes, I get that the majority of the people in these regions want to split off and align with Russia. I get that.

I get that pro-separatist groups in these regions were in active combat prior to Russia's invasion. I get that Ukraine's military was actively engaging in combat within those regions. I get that. Ukraine blocked off Crimea's access to fresh water. I get that, too.

All of that is /completely/ irrelevant to Putin's reasoning for invading Ukraine.

And I think that's what's most annoying about how Putin does things. There's always a small hint of truth to his reasoning and people get completely stuck on that for some reason. This is part of his propaganda.

If you look at the reasons he gave for invading Ukraine, one of them was "denazification." How are you going to get rid of that pretext? Volodymyr Zelenskiy is Jewish and born to Jewish parents! How was he elected if Ukraine has a Nazi problem?!

But to quadruple re-iterate, none of those things matter. Putin, ultimately, wants to pull back NATO, he wants to gain control over former Soviet countries, and it wants Russia (USSR) to be a superpower again.

You're trying to see things from a perspective that just doesn't apply at all. Again, look at my initial post for my reasoning as to why this is the case. And again, look at the literal fact that Putin sent troops to invade /ALL/ of Ukraine, not just the Russia-backed separatist regions.

FWIW, yes, Putin has spewed a bunch of bullshit about Ukraine not being a nation, and such. But pretexts add up, and remove enough of them, and invasion is simply not on the table anymore.

The neo-Nazi line is probably based on things like https://theintercept.com/2022/02/24/ukraine-facebook-azov-ba... (a bunch of references inline — I had no idea of this until earlier today when it was posted to, of all things, HN).

In a democracy, it takes 51% of voters to elect a president, so you can still have large population that doesn't agree with that (I am not saying this is the case in Ukraine — esp as Zelenskyy got something like 70+% of votes — just that the fact that they've got a Jewish president does not mean they don't have a Nazi problem: it certainly makes it less likely, but they are, logically, independent arguments — even 1% of "active" neo-Nazis in any country would be a huge problem, though I repeat, I am not saying this was happening in Ukraine).

To be honest, I don't see how invading Ukraine and turning the entire world against Russia is going to make Russia superpower anything, and I'd be surprised if Putin is such a dummy to think so (though, I am beginning to fear he might be).

I must admit to not knowing what Putin would have done if circumstances were different in a way I suggest, but you seem very confident about it, so apologies if I don't take your view as truth either (you might be right, but we'll likely never know): we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Sanctions vs invasion is a false dichotomy. It presumes that either of those things will cause better outcomes than not doing them, and that these are the only two things that could be done.

The burden is on supporters of war/sanctions to demonstrate that these measures can be reasonably expected to improve the situation. By itself, "well we can't just do nothing!" is not a good argument for taking a specific course of action.

You may have missed it in the heat of the moment, but the invasion and the war are already in full swing - by Russia. No matter what you decide, the war and the invasion are already there.

You may have missed it in the heat of the moment, but the GP comment was arguing for invading Russia instead of imposing sanctions (for those of us who don't think sanctions will help anything), as if those were the two only options.

I did miss it in the heat of the moment. You’re right.

> I don't see how this isn't anything but virtue signalling, and forcing citizens to bear the cost.

It is the same citizens who are ultimately funding the Russian military with their taxes. I understand it isn't by individual choice, but that's the way it is and it is up to them to fix it.

Totally agree. It's amazing how many in this thread don't understand this principle.

The term "virtue signaling" is used so broadly as to be almost meaningless. One might even got to say that anytime someone uses the term "virtue signaling", it's virtue signaling. (sigh)

Please don't attack another user with snark or flames when they're in a difficult situation. The fact that others are in still more difficult situations does not justify this.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30507142.

This is stupid like 99% of corporate censorship actions and yet again demonstrating why pointlessly centralized address books (like DNS) are bad (the alternative I have in mind is petnames, before someone thinks I'm referring to some wacky solution).

All the BS aside, the only thing I have problems with is "with immediate effect". If the customer didn't break your ToS or existing laws and pays you, you are OBLIGATED to continue the service. If you don't, that's called stealing and it's a scumbag thing to do. (I'm not even going to mention the substantial time and money investment a typical host change takes.)

Thank you for standing against barbarism

A lot of immature crybabies here who think it somehow compares being mildly inconvenienced and bombed in your sleep.

Russians have a very long way to go if this is still their attitude in the face of everything their regime is doing. Well, as a Pole whose family was kidnapped and let to die in Syberia this nation definitely has a lot to learn when it comes to taking responsibility.

I'm moving all my domains to Namecheap.

Been a customer for 12 years. Will be transferring all my domains out. Get woke; go broke. Your meaningless ban does nothing.

I hate when corporations do hypocrite virtue signaling pretending to fight for just cause. Dudes, Putin and government are not using your service, real people are. You are racist and nationalist scum pretending to be just.

Virtue signaling at it's finest. where were you serving ukrainian customers while they were ethnically wiping silently russian speaking peoples of Donbass since 2014 ?

I have over 30 domains with Namecheap and will be leaving for good. This move is uncalled for since regular people on both sides are suffering.

This is the site with the most horrible user experience I've ever seen. A site so stupid that it says we can't verify your identity even though I sent a recovery email with the mail I registered with. There really is no logical explanation for why they could be this big with godaddy. I hope it ends soon. Please do not use this site. If you are using it, stop using it.

Bro just build your own internet.

But such moves only shows the unreliability of businesses that preach net neutrality and similar things and in fact discriminate based on ethnicity.

So they show that Putin is right, that democracy and liberalism are dead, that Ukrainians are nazi, and rally people around him even more.

Net neutrality is a concept in American telecommunications law, not an international political or philosophical concept.

It has nothing to do with Russia, and even less to do with services running on the Internet: it solely concerns itself with the relationship between ISPs and the traffic they carry. Namecheap is not an ISP.

We've always had a policy that almost anything goes excluding human rights abuses and especially war crimes and supporting violence. Nothing changed here.

So, you blame your clients: programmers, webmasters, etc in war crimes.

Got it.

Even I am Estonian, I move away looking for a more sane company.

Cool. When will you ban US customers for their government's continual war crimes? https://truthout.org/articles/the-us-drops-an-average-of-46-...

Or are you just disenfranchising a population in order to gain virtue points?

Honestly, if Namecheap wants to earn my respect back after this their only option is to ban me and their other US customers for the crimes of the US government, but they won't because the US market is too lucrative for them to lose.

I would have assumed that to mean, very specifically, that you wouldn't do business with, for example, a Private Military Contractor accused of human rights abuses. The specific business. Not brushing off the individual citizens of an entire country collectively, no matter their agreement with the war, for the issues you have with the country's governance. In some cases, they would have assumed themselves safe with you, in fact, because they were not seemingly aligned with their government and more aligned with Western values, and thought you would be more censorship-resistant. Far from them, I am certain, would be the idea that you would be the first to threaten their domains when they can't even pay for another registrar. (Which is another thing that would have been a good reason for, say, a Russian activist to renew with long 5+ year terms, which... Are you going to refund those? Or just tell them to figure it out?)

I mean, I can understand where you're coming from, but it's a stretch. I would not think that's what the language means in the terms. At all. It would make an activist's day 1000x worse. Imagine if they're right now being detained and can't renew or move their domain (and this is why they took a 5 year term with you!) and they can't even see this email or this discussion. You might make the worst week of their life into a much worse one. It seems bad for business. Just saying. Older netheads expect the net to be censorship resistant, not ban-happy, for what it's worth.

I imagine the conversation today went something like:

> NamecheapCEO: "What % of our business comes from Russia?"

> Accountant: "It's marginal."

> NamecheapCEO: "Cool. I have a great idea to get some spotlight."

Am I far off?

Well from their website they have 3 offices and 1700 employees in Ukraine so I'd guess this hits a lot more closer to home for them than your simulated conversation suggests.

I think this is a good way to bring attention to this cause, however, I can't help but point out the notable hypocrisies that this crisis has revealed:

-Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) are legitimate ways to oppose an occupying power? Oh that's quite interesting, I thought that those were considered racist/anti-semitic for the past decade, what happened?

-Sovereignty matters? Interesting, apparently it doesn't matter in the case of U.S. troops occupying the northeast corner of Syria or in the case of the Syrian Golan Heights.

-Refugees are welcome (Hungary/Poland), interesting...I thought that these nations couldn't take on war refugees. Could it have something to do with the skin color of today's refugees versus those from a few years ago?

-In Germany's case, they claimed that they shouldn't pass full SWIFT sanctions because it might hurt Russian civil society. Interesting...they didn't have the same worry when it came to the Iranians for a much smaller offense as invading a neighbor.

Just some uncomfortable food for thought. You may now downvote for pointing out the West's hypocrisy. This obviously does not absolve what Russia has done (stupid I have to even say this, but given today's atmosphere...), but I thought I would point out an aspect of hypocrisy this crisis has brought around.

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