On the 19th of March, 2022 all raters (about 1500+ raters) received the following emails from their vendors:

Appen

We show you are currently registered as a rater located in Russia. We are notifying you of a 30-day freeze on tasks in your area due to the ongoing situation in your region. We are evaluating payment options to offset potential impacts. Those will be determined in the near future, and we will update you accordingly. Please check your email for any additional updates. We truly appreciate your patience and understanding during this time.

Welocalize

Our ability to transact with Russia-based Raters is compromised by the current geopolitical situation and regulations. Today, Welocalize’s primary goal is to ensure you are paid for the work you completed before restrictions apply to our payment systems. 

The same notices were received by raters from Ukraine and Belorussia. 

Before this happened we notice that vendors were actively conducting language expertise surveys, most likely with the purpose to reallocate local specific tasks across different markets to raters with local language expertise.

Russian and Ukrainian raters who want to stay ananonimous confirmed that for most of the raters, this job was the only source of income and the freeze of the project is a disaster. Unfortunately, as usual, normal people suffer the most, while rich and powerful stay less affected by the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine…this is the sad truth of the reality.