Note, I’m posting this under an anonymous account for security reasons. I’ve asked for the Forum’s administrative team to vouch for me as someone with longstanding connections to the EA community.
I’ve been added to a Telegram group of people active in the Ukrainian resistance movement. They’re currently organising logistics efforts to support the defence of Ukraine. The group has been coordinating with organisations on the ground, including the Ukraine Ministry of Defence, and has e.g. organised for large shipments of body armour etc. to be sent to the front lines.
As far as I can tell, the group appears legitimate – I was added by a good friend who is currently working in Ukraine as a journalist. The group organiser is an entrepreneur who has organised an ad-hoc collection of people around the world with contacts at various places, e.g. government procurement, materiel manufacturers, logistics companies etc. However, this is very much a case of strangers helping strangers in a time of need, and I can’t vouch for the group beyond that.
They’re currently looking for rapid funding to provide more equipment to the Ukrainian military and citizen brigades. Examples of things that funds are being sought for (or that have been funded through the group already) include helmets, body armour, thermal imaging sensors, and thermal clothes for troops. These shipments are being organised at large scales (e.g. 50k+ units). There are likely to also be opportunities to pay for e.g. warehouses, transportation, etc.
They’re currently looking for people who can make rapid payments of $100,000 or more, in either fiat or crypto. The payments are typically being made directly to suppliers who are shipping the equipment.
If you can contribute smaller amounts ($10-$20k), they are also purchasing vehicles to help with transportation.
There are obviously lots of caveats around this kind of giving, especially this advice from GiveWell about donating during disasters. You should also feel comfortable about money you give potentially being used to support soldiers/citizen brigades in an active military conflict.
However, I think the value of slowing the Russian advance in Ukraine is extremely high, and that providing support to the Ukrainian resistance is likely to be among the best ways that foreigners can currently help out. This seems like it could be an unusually high-EV opportunity to help out in Ukraine right now in a space that seems like it will be much more neglected by traditional donors – there will be a limited window of opportunity where this kind of support is valuable.
Get involved
If you want to donate: email me at [email protected] or DM me on the Forum, and I’ll put you in touch with group organisers
Spread the word: if you know others who might be interested in donating, or who can provide logistical support in neighbouring countries (e.g. Poland, Romania), please send them a link to this post
I have strong downvoted as a strong disendorsement of getting involved in hot-button, highly publicized military conflicts such as this, where the sign of the donation is unclear. I think this could be slightly contributing to the risk of escalating to nuclear war, and may actually prolong the war, increasing the amount of deaths. I think it's terrible that this is so highly upvoted and there's no debate.
(Parenthetical update: I would definitely be in favor of people here supporting effective altruist-identifying individuals they know in Ukraine, including arming them if they need that.)
[I’m sleep-deprived so this is not well written and fairly repetitive and unstructured, apologies. I also know nothing about politics and usually follow a policy of almost never reading the news. So me writing a comment on a complex geopolitical issue is arguably ludicrous.]
I see your reasoning with these points, and agree that the sign of donating is unclear, but I also think there are counterarguments to the points you have made.
I think that effectively giving in to Putin’s threats here plausibly emboldens him and other malevolent autocrats to take over more countries in the future with impunity. Instead, perhaps the more effective approach, and the one that might have better results in the long run, might be what the West is currently doing: forming a coalition that enforces punishments on malevolent autocrats invading other countries, etc. (I do think that the US invading e.g. Iraq is sufficiently dissimilar from the current case, though I know many people disagree on this.)
(Perhaps one might think that Putin is not a malevolent autocrat. Again, I think this seems likely but I don’t provide evidence here.)
If the West does not do this, it might become clear to Putin and others that they should invade neighboring countries (e.g., China taking over Taiwan) given that there are large material incentives to doing so, and that they will not face much resistance.
Therefore, if the West does not stand up strongly to Putin now, the result might be more violence and lives lost in the long run. Also, the historic track record of appeasement when it comes to malevolent dictators has not been good. (Though it’s difficult to know the relevant counterfactuals, of course.)
A few other miscellaneous points:
I guess the big question is what the overall policy should be for dealing with situations like this? If the West gives in to Putin now, what should the response be when he invades other countries? Or when other nuclear armed nations invade other countries? If we are going to give in to any nuclear armed autocrat, that’s a quick recipe for giving over more and more territory and power to malevolent leaders, which seems very negative from a short-termist and longtermist perspective.
Overall, it’s plausible to me that every day we prolong this war might be net positive from a long-term perspective, even if more lives are lost in the short-term. First, it makes it more likely that sanctions bite hard enough and Putin has to give up. Second, a longer war will be a greater deterrent to Putin and other autocrats in the future. Last, prolonging the war plausibly weakens Putin’s and his allies power and strengthens political opposition in Russia. If Putin is succesful now, then the Russian people will update on that and more likely support future nationalistic leaders. However, if Putin fails, they might be more likely to support more conciliatory, peaceful leaders.
Generally, reducing Putin’s influence seems very valuable from a longtermist perspective since he seems to has caused a lot of harm in the past decades. For example, he plausibly helped to increase political polarization in the US, increased international tensions, etc.
Another point to keep in mind: Imagine we live in the universe where Putin is really willing to consider launching nuclear missiles over this conflict, if Ukraine is not given to him without much resistance. (If we don’t live in this universe, we don’t have to worry about his nuclear threats.) It seems to me that the Putin of this universe would also be fairly likely to invade more countries and make further nuclear threats (to which the world would have to give in again and again) giving him ever more power. The Putin of this universe would be a terrible person to give much power to.
Lastly, I agree that getting involved in hot-button issues is usually not wise (e.g., because they are too crowded) but this is not always true. For example, many EAs also became involved in COVID.
All that said, I agree that this issue is complex and fraught with uncertainty about how one should act.
If your argument about prolonging the war is correct, and I do agree with your logic around autocratic leaders being emboldened to take more land (such as China with Taiwan), I'd still argue that it's funded enough already with enough attention to not require EA funds. If that new FTX Future Fund invested all $1B into Ukraine it will be a minority percentage of all total funds and the things that are under-funded but offer greater rewards will not be funded (because they don't have the same level of public/international support).
I agree that this is not an especially cost-effective intervention. I was hoping to convey something else with my comment.
Sure, but the fact that an area has already received dozens of billions in funding is in itself not a knock-down argument. For example, hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on climate change every year and hundreds of billions were spent on COVID vaccine development alone. But posts about interventions in these areas would receive much less pushback (or usually no pushback).
Overall, I think that interventions in this space are plausibly more cost-effective than the average climate change intervention discussed by EAs. (That being said, there are additional strategic and PR reasons to praise climate change as a cause area since this is one of the ideological cornerstones of EA’s main political ally.)
The main reason I wrote my comment was not to suggest that this is the most cost-effective intervention (which I agree it is not). I wanted to respond to the large number of downvotes and, if I am to be frank, my impression of the somewhat hostile tone of Dony’s comment, which made me think that many EAs think that OP’s post is clearly net negative.
In addition, I felt that arguments in favor of concessions/giving in to Putin’s threats (e.g., this post) were overrepresented on this Forum (and among EAs I know in private). I was responding more to these sentiments (and also to Dony’s claim that there is no debate). Lastly, there are also game-theoretic reasons to not advertize one's willingness to give in to coercion.