Independent Russian News Site Meduza Raises Over $200000 in Crypto – According to a Bloomberg study, the crisis in Ukraine has impacted Russian-language news site Meduza in multiple ways.
President Vladimir Putin’s administration imposed restrictions on independent reporting on the crisis soon after the Kremlin launched its “special military operation,” and the media source has requested help to resettle its 25 journalists in Latvia.
Exiled Russian media have flocked to the small Baltic nation of about 2 million people, which has a strong Russian-speaking population. However, since Stripe ceased services in the Russian Federation to comply with the sanctions, Meduza’s 30,000 Russian readers who supported it before the war are unable to transfer payments through the payment processor.
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Meduza has been compelled to resort to its foreign audience for financial assistance in US dollars, euros, or bitcoin as a result of the war and sanctions. It currently takes card payments, bank wire transfers, Paypal transfers, and a variety of coins, including bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), the stablecoin tether (USDT), and the privacy-focused monero (XMR) (XMR). The given BTC and ETH wallets have already accumulated around $230,000 in cryptocurrency, according to the study.
Ivan Kolpakov, the news portal’s editor-in-chief, commented on the situation, saying that Meduza is now raising just around half of what it needs to develop. While he declined to share the overall quantity of donations, he did say that the website is for the first time accepting crypto and relying only on money from foreigners, and that:
“We couldn’t have predicted that Western countries would impose sanctions first, destroying our crowdfunding.”
Independent Russian media outlets have been subjected to unprecedented pressure from Moscow authorities, leading to the closure of some and the blocking of others. Following warnings over its coverage, the Novaya Gazeta daily halted publication in March, and the Ekho Moskvy radio station’s FM frequency was handed over to the state-run Sputnik.
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Meduza, which was created in the Latvian capital following Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, was dubbed a “foreign agency” by the Russian authorities last year. Before the latest penalties officially terminated Russian donations, the designation, which targets Russian media getting funds from abroad, had already harmed its advertising revenue.
