For almost a year now a bloody war has been waged against Ukraine with military assistance and funding from the Russian authorities. Thousands of people have died. Hundreds of thousands have fled their homes and became refugees.

In the beginning of 2015, Boris Nemtsov, one of the key opponents of Vladimir Putin, began to compile a report “Putin.War”, which was supposed to reveal the truth about who benefited from the war and how millions of people were being deceived. It is an important report, because it was meant to break through Russia’s state propaganda.

Nemtsov has collected data, but on February 27, 2015 he was gunned down in Moscow by the walls of the Kremlin before he could finish the report.

His murder proved once again the importance of his work and this report in particular. That’s why Nemtsov’s associates, friends, and people decided to finish his research. The information was updated and checked over the past few months, compiled into one package, and then -- on May 12, 2015, the presented to the public.

However not a single Russian publishing house agreed to publish the report. And that is why we started a fund raising campaign on Yandex.Money and PayPal to print the report ourselves and distribute copies of it all over Russia.

On May 13, 2015 Russian activist Vsevolod Chagayev, who started the fundraising campaign, reported that PayPal had blocked the account for donations. Paypal said:

“We quickly analysed the information and have to acknowledge that removing the restrictions on the account would not be possible at this moment. This is due to the fact that at this moment, PayPal could not allow its system to be used for collecting donations for the activities of political parties or for political purposes in Russia.”

We believe PayPal’s actions and explanations are absurd. PayPal did not care to ascertain that the funds were not being raised for political, but for educational activity, which we hoped would help stop the bloodshed in Ukraine. But now -- through its actions PayPal, however, reinforcing Putin’s regime, de-facto supporting  military aggression against Ukraine, and stopping peope from joining anti-war campaign there.

We demand that PayPal and its owner, eBay, reopen the account for donations for printing the report, “Putin.War” and offer an apology to the Russian activists. Until then, we call for boycott of Paypal.