Hello, I'm Misha. I've been a Fiverr freelancer for a few years now. Helping other people all over the world to create great new music was my goal, passion and my main way to earn money. I've met plenty of great musicians along the way, and it gave me ultimate joy to make them happy. And now Fiverr is cancelling all of its Russian creators.

When the war between Russian Government and Ukraine started, I was incredibly shocked, saddened and devastated. I have a lot of friends living in Ukraine and it was horrible to read about what's happening to them through the messenger. Needless to say, me and most of my friends and relatives were openly against this war from day one. I sincerely hope that this will be over soon.

When the sanctions were announced I was ready for them and I totally understood their purpose. But then companies that I need to properly do my job started cancelling Russians. All of them. Regardless of their political views, their take on the situation. The only criteria was the place of birth which is not something you can choose as far as I'm aware. I was doing everything that I could to adapt to the situation, but then Fiverr announced that I can't work through their platform despite the fact that I don't do any political services and am against what's happening to Ukrainian citizens.

Please get me straight: I'm perfectly capable of understanding that any of my problems with bringing food to the table are nothing compared to what most of the Ukrainians are suffering through. At the same time I'm not thinking that this is fair to blame many of us Russians for what's happening because many of us haven't agreed to this war, never supported it and are actively against it. To put it simply: this is discrimination in its literal sense, just as described in the dictionary.

I'm not concerned with new phones, I'm not complaining about mcdonald's, I'm not angry at anyone, I just want my job back. Me and many other Russian people have put a lot of effort into Fiverr as a platform by delivering a great service to its customers and paying a large portion of earnings to Fiverr itself. In the hard times we expect Fiverr to be our friend and help us through them in return.

Dear Mikhail Kaufman and other Fiverr employees. If you want to help people in Ukraine, let us do that together. Instead of cancelling all of us let's donate parts of our income through your platform directly to humanitarian causes that are able to make real difference. In times of hardships we need to unite and not divide. Russian people aren't equal to Russian government, we don't make these desicions.

Peace!