A Russian independent news company has raised more than $250,000 in cryptocurrency donations from supporters in order to continue reporting independent news under a barrage of Russian government propaganda and censorship.
Meduza, a Latvian-based Russian-language news site that claims to report on “the real Russia, today,” has been asking for donations since April 2021 in the form of United States dollar, euro and cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), BNB, Tether (USDT), Monero (XMR) and Zcash (ZEC).
Since publishing their donations plea, the news company has received around $250,000 in crypto donations through 146,000 individual transactions. Around 93% of the total donation amount came in the form of 3.75 BTC with $116,954 and 49.9 ETH with $117,767.
Folks, Meduza has redesigned its crowdfunding after being disconnected from our supporters in Russia. We now turn to you—our global audience—to replace those 30k donators. Help us keep Russians & the world informed about the monstrous war against Ukraine. https://t.co/y83ieV9LuT
— Meduza in English (@meduza_en) March 14, 2022
Meduza’s money troubles actually began in April 2021, after it and several other independent media outlets got labeled by Russia’s Justice Ministry as “foreign agents,” requiring the company to place a large font warning in each of its Russian-language articles informing readers of its “foreign agent” status. The same warning also has to appear in all advertisements, leading to a loss of nearly all its advertisers. It wrote on its donations FAQ:
“As you can imagine, few companies will pay to promote their products below a warning that the content was “created by foreign agents.”
Being labeled as a foreign agent did not prevent readers in Russia from donating to the organization, however, as the company promptly set up an avenue for contributors to provide regulator donations through their banks using payment processor Stripe and through crypto.
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