RU / ENG

On the 6th of March 2022 Visa and Mastercard announced that they were going to suspend transactions outside of Russia for cards issued by Russian banks. Inside of Russia the cards will continue to work though. This decision has been made because of the "military operation" (as Russian state owned media name it) against Ukraine commenced by Vladimir Putin and aims to economically restrain the political regime of Russia. We all understand the intentions of Visa and Mastercard. We all understand the importance of sanctions against the regime to stop the aggression. But unfortunately this particular sanction affects neither Putin, nor his supporters in Russia.

The decision of Visa and Mastercard affects us — those Russians who resist Putin and had to leave Russia because we were threatened by prison for our political beliefs. We are exiles and all the money we have is in Russian banks. We don't have any other livelihood. Now we can't pay for shelter, for food, for clothes and are forced to go back to Russia. And in Russia we surely will be persecuted for our stance on Putin's aggression against Ukraine!

Also it will be impossible for a lot of us who emigrated earlier and are now working abroad to support our parents, grandparents and other relatives who remain in Russia because money transfers to Russian cards will be blocked. But our relatives do not support Putin!

On the other hand, almost all of Putin's supporters stay in Russia and are not going to leave. The vast majority of them can use Mir cards (the Russian national payments processing system) instead of Visa and Mastercard. So the decision of Visa and Mastercard companies will have no effect on them at all.

Visa and Mastercard, please, take back your decision to suspend transactions made with cards issued by Russian banks. It does not hurt Putin, it hurts his opponents and political exiles!