8 April 2026
by OVD-Info
Source: OVD-Info
Hello!
Around half a year ago the OVD-Info team work up to a rather difficult morning. Usually we open our work chats and can see how much people have supported us over the previous day – who subscribed to our mailing lists or donated money and who, conversely, decided to cancel these subscriptions and why. This is a part of our work day we have long since become accustomed to. But that November morning was different: the previous night had seen approximately 12,000 regular donations from Russia cancelled in the blink of an eye. We instantly lost all of our donations from Russia.
This is not our first such experience: in March 2022 we cancelled all our subscriptions ourselves as a preventative measure. We were able to re-build the same support base in less than a year, an impressive feat. In the first year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine we expected a new spike in political repression – alas, we did not wait in vain. But we are not facing this alone, but with the help of thousands of people in Russia who are not indifferent.
But this time it was different. Firstly, the donations were cancelled without explanation; we spent long weeks trying to find ways to set them up again. We tried everything, no idea too crazy, unsuccessfully. We realised we were going to have to start from scratch.
The landscape has changed around us. The fourth year of the full-scale war has resulted in an accumulated tiredness of hearing bad news. Despite this, though, we have managed to receive more than 5000 regular donors from foreign cards, a huge thank you to everyone who has been able to help us! Through all of this, though, we have not stopped trying to re-establish rouble donations.
Unfortunately, though, we have nonetheless been unable to achieve this and we must acknowledge it is hardly likely either. This means that a large proportion of our donors will be unable to support us because of technical difficulties.
Therefore, we once again are really asking you for help.
- I have a foreign bank card:
- Please, set up a regular donation to OVD-Info or ask your friends and family to do it if they have foreign bank cards.
- SUPPORT OVD-INFO
- Help us on the road to 6000 regular donors! This is only half of what it was before, but we can manage it. Admittedly, this has meant re-doing our work processes and, unfortunately, slightly reducing the scope of support we can accept. And we need your help so much all the same.
- I don’t have a foreign bank card, what can I do?
- If you want to donate to us with roubles, we have launched a fundraiser on the platform Zaodno: we are collecting 700,000 roubles to cover the work of our phone hotline, the work of volunteers and for our project. Without this unseen but large expenditure, our work is impossible. Please, support OVD-Info so we can continue to support the victims of repression.
- Can I set up regular payments?
- We appreciate that Zaodno is not the most convenient or popular medium and requires a bit of refinement: donations which used to be made automatically every month not have to be done again manually every month. But we are working on simplifying the process!
- How can I set up regular automatic payments?
- The majority of major and popular Russia banks now offer automatic payments, but the set-up is a process. You usually need to show which account the money is to be taken from as well as to which account is it being sent and how much, choose a frequency of payments and, (if necessary) an end date for the payments.
- Below we attach instructions for the most popular one: T-Bank. We know this can be done with Sberbank, VTB Bank, Alpha Bank and Raiffeisen Bank.
- Set up a (new) automatic payment
- Open the Payments section, go to Regular Payments, Add and select Automatic Payments
- Select transaction type: either an internal transfer or to another person.
- Enter the payee details: their phone number, card number and account details.
- Select payment amount and frequency.
- For monthly payments, select a day of the month;
- For weekly payments, select a day of the week;
- If you need to, you can set up an end date for the payments too.
- Select the account to make the payments.
- Your automatic payment is complete.
If you have any problems, please email us at do****@*****fo.org and we’ll get it sorted. And thank you for coming to help us continually even in the darkest of times.
In solidarity,
The OVD-Info Team
Translated by Oscar Seecharan
