Main narratives:
- General anti-government sentiments;
- Support for Ukraine is ineffective.
Overview:
During this reporting week, Lithuanian crowdfunder “Contribee” came under fire: media reported that the Lithuanian prosecutors had opened a pre-trial investigation into the Lithuanian crowdfunding platform Contribee, as it has now emerged that one of its shareholders took a large sum of money from an NGO account on Contribee for his personal use. It appears that more than 130K euros may have been transferred by Gediminas Ratkevičius, one of Contribee’s shareholders, from the account of Blue/Yellow, a prominent NGO supporting the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The topic has been used to spread Kremlin-aligned messages. For example, Ugnius Kiguolis, a prominent anti-vaxxer and anti-government actor, wrote a post that did not pay any attention to the Contribee platform itself, just criticising well-known personas and funding for Ukraine. His followers actively joined his side, undermining any support for Ukraine and openly mocking those who donated to Ukraine. Support for Ukraine suffers the most in this story: the Blue/Yellow fund, which has effortlessly collected different kinds of support for Ukraine, is discriminated against unreasonably. Its name is repeatedly used in all the stories featuring financial crimes. Furthermore, many people are misled by the headlines, which usually mention the organisation’s name and the illegal money transfers for “personal use.” Just as in the case of Kiguolis’s post, many people directly associate the donation with financial machinations.
