Ukrajin war and kiteboarders
Perhaps most of us know what is happening in Ukraine! How do we approach it and how does it affect kiters...
From the very beginning, it is worth mentioning that we as Kiteboarding.cz also completely disagree and are against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Sadly, even today, it is possible that one's mental state and some personal needs may cause so much suffering to ordinary people who are just trying to make a living. These victims are on both sides of the conflict and will also benefit people from countries not directly affected by the conflict.
As kiters, the conflict mostly affects us so far rather indirectly through our friends and acquaintances, who instead of the planned kite trip or race went home to war to defend their country or vice versa due to economic sanctions can not travel, or stay stuck somewhere cut off money and canceled flights to Russia. Well, in truth, with the information circulating about the declaration of martial law in Russia, an unwanted stay abroad can suddenly turn into a win in the life lottery ...
What can we as kites do with that? Each of us can provide help, whether financial or material, to those who are fleeing the war or to the regime of their country, with which they disagree and are being prosecuted.
An interesting idea was to directly help specific people in Ukraine by booking and paying for accommodation that they offer on portals such as Booking.com or Airbnb without the intention of using the accommodation. This will give these specific people quick financial help. For example, Novinky.cz informs about such a way of help.
Further support can be the dissemination of information (preferably verified and substantiated) about what is actually happening. It is crazy to think that a large part of the population in Russia has no idea and they are celebrating on television how their army is liberating its neighbors from Nazi domination.
According to various sources, free access to information is likely in the very near future for Russia to try to prevent radical ways from fear of the spread of civil unrest and riots against the regime. Social networks are no longer functioning in Russia, and access to foreign news sites is also largely blocked. However, our portal is most likely not, and that is why we share at least fragments of what is happening in Ukraine here as well. Until Russia is completely isolated from the world wide web, it will be possible to circumvent these government restrictions, for example through a VPN.
What is a VPN, how does it work and what is it for? Blocking access to a site can often work by preventing a site from connecting directly to that country. However, if you connect to an unblocked server elsewhere in the world and ask it to connect to the requested site instead of you and mediate the flow of information, then it will work. It's similar to when you want to go from Brno to Prague (who would also travel from Prague to Brno, right?) And someone closes you D1 (how could something like this happen at all? ;-)). You probably won't be standing in the column all day, but you'll try to sacrifice it somewhere in the districts. It's similar on the Internet. Proton VPN provides such a service free of charge, where all you have to do is register, download their program, turn it on, connect to one of the list of free servers and after connecting you can browse the Internet as you are used to. In this case, your computer will "chat" with a server in England, for example, and for the sites you go to, it will then look like it is connected to the Internet in England, so you will bypass the blocked path a little longer and slower. way, but you get to the destination. :-) The communication path between computers is actually much longer, more complex and even encrypted, so that such a user is at the same time protected from traceability and detection. The TOR browser has a similar built-in function and here is an instruction on how to use it to bypass Russian censorship.
This guide is our little contribution to suppressing the crisis and against totalitarian practices that restrict fundamental freedoms. We will be happy to share this information, especially with the people of Ukraine and Russia who are most affected by this crisis.
We hope that this article will at least help someone and that, thanks to it, we will not become the target of a hacker attack on our own.
We wish the Ukrainian fighters only the best, because we realize that they are also fighting for us and the Russians, so that they can understand as soon as possible that they are fighting mainly against themselves, because the war and their country will not bring anything good.
Team KITEBOARDING.CZ
