Namecheap ends service for Russian customers due to government’s ‘war crimes’

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Namecheap is ending service for customers based in Russia because of war crimes committed in Ukraine.

An email was sent Monday from Namecheap to customers, and was shared online by other customers of the company.

Due to the Russian regime's war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine, we will no longer be providing services to users in Russia. The fact that your authoritarian government is committing human rights abuses and engaging in war crimes makes this a policy decision we have made and will stand by.

The original email stated that customers had until March 6th to transfer their domains to another provider, but Namecheap has since changed the deadline to March 22nd.

Namecheap declared support for the people of Ukraine after Russian military action began. Richard Kirkendall claimed his company stood against Russian aggression and war crimes being committed against the people of Ukraine.

Team members on the ground were being affected. Visitors to the Namecheap website were directed to a Ukrainian website to learn more about how foreign supporters could help.

Namecheap has a large footprint in Ukraine, with more than 30 job openings in the country, based in the cities of Kharkiv and Lviv. At least 10 civilians have been killed and many buildings have been destroyed in the past few days as a result of Russian rockets and fire.

The impact of expressing opposition to the Russian invasion is unclear. Many Namecheap customers expressed anger at the decision, claiming that it would impact many ordinary Russians who had no influence over the country's military action.

In one instance, a Moscow-based journalist said that an archive of his work since 2015, including award-winning investigative news stories, would need to be hosted at a new location.

An updated policy had been communicated to Russian customers under which exceptions would be made for websites that are helping to end the war and regime.

Web infrastructure organizations that have championed political neutrality are being forced to take sides. On February 28th, a Ukrainian official asked the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to remove the.ru top-level domain.

In the US, social media companies have been able to take more carefully targeted action against Russian strategic assets.

Some people in the commercial technology sector are against the war. Lev Gershenzon, the former head of news at Russia's largest search engine, urged his former colleagues to do more to highlight the war in Ukraine.

According to Gershenzon, at least 30 million Russian users are seeing that there is no war on the main page of Yandex. Human lives are lost every day and hour of such news. My former colleagues are also responsible for this.