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Dad in care, Ukraine minister continues online war; speaks to Zelensky daily
Ukraine minister Mykhailo Fedorov said as long as Russians are silent, they are complicit, justifying his call for digital sanction against Russians.
Mykhailo Fedorov, the Ukraine minister who forced big tech companies to pull out from Russia, is worried about his father who has been in intensive care for the past week after a missile struck the house next door. In his first interview since the war broke out with the New York Times, the youngest minister of Ukraine said he has brushed shoulders with the horror. “The war has come knocking on my door as well personally,” he said in the Zoom interview given to NYT.
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The 31-year-old minister attended the Zoom call from an undisclosed location near Kyiv, as NYT reported, and said his goal was to create a “digital blockade” and to make life so unpleasant and inconvenient for Russian citizens that they would question the war. Praising the companies for their support, he added that more can be done to corner Russia. And his tweets to Google, Apple, Elon Musk are not the only reasons that these companies stood against Russia; the sanctions by the West also helped.
“We believe that as long as Russians are silent, they are complicit to the aggression and to the killing of our people,” he said.
As soon as the war began, Fedorov mobilized all that he had to target Russia on the Internet. He also helped form a group of volunteer hackers to ‘wreak havoc on Russian websites and online services.
“In the 45-minute interview on Zoom, Mr Fedorov, wearing a loose-fitting gray fleece with black zippers, sat in front of a wood-paneled wall. He has gotten about three to four hours of sleep a night, he said, often interrupted every 30 minutes or so by alerts on the iPhone that he keeps next to his bed. He said he has been worried about his father, who has been in intensive care for the past week after a missile struck the house next door,” the report said.
Before joining politics, Fedorov was leading a digital marketing company which helped him land a job with Ukrainian Present Volodymyr Zelensky in 2018 as Zelensky’s digital campaign director.
Fedorov speaks to Zelensky every day since the war broke out, the report said.
In the last few days, Fedorov has reached out to a host of companies, including Apple, Google, Netflix, SpaceX, Meta, YouTube etc. His latest missive has been to Xerox, whom he has urged to stop supply in Russia.
His isolation tactic has, however, been questioned to which he said it was the only way to jolt the Russian people into action. “After cruise missiles started flying over my house and over houses of many other Ukrainians, and also things started exploding, we decided to go into counter-attack,” he said in the interview.
“The truth is on our side. I am sure we are going to win,” the minister said.
