Наталя Хандусенко Hot News 8 July 2025, 11:26

UPD. Upwork responded to the mass blocking of Ukrainians on the platform. Currently, more than 100 cases are known. What's next?

Ukrainian freelancers and agencies are being blocked on the Upwork platform. This is not just a loss of accounts, but also a source of income, which for many IT professionals is the only one. More than 100 cases are already known, including accounts with an income of $300,000.

According to Kyrylo Kozak, an entrepreneur and former Upwork community manager in Ukraine, who is working on unblocking Ukrainian accounts and is cooperating with the Ministry of Digital Affairs on this issue, the platform has responded to his request and will begin unblocking.

He also analyzed the blocking to identify key issues and the cities where IT users were most often banned. He also provided some tips on how to avoid this if you work during airstrikes and live within the range of electronic warfare.

What's happening?

According to Kozak, this happens as follows: accounts request verification, people pass it and immediately receive a ban without any possibility of appeal. This applies to both individual professionals and companies, including those operating in Ukraine.

Especially affected are:

agencies that are registered in Ukraine and operate transparently;
freelancers who left the temporarily occupied territories before or after the war began and have long lived and worked in the controlled part of Ukraine;
those who are registered in temporarily occupied regions, but are located on the territory of Ukraine.

There is currently no regional support, and there are no communication channels with the platform team. In addition, the branch about Ukraine has been closed. So Ukrainians are losing their only source of income.

Ban cases reported by Ukrainians

"3 profiles were banned in 3 months, we are currently writing to support, but to no avail," wrote Threads user @profi_guru.

"I recently created a profile on the platform, managed to download everything, figure it out, fill out the information, watched the video and thought, "How do I start?" and was immediately banned. They wrote, "You came from a country under sanctions," etc. I wrote to them that I was from Kyiv, that I had a sole proprietorship, and so on. For almost three weeks, I haven't heard from them, they wrote twice that they would figure it out. There was no such hopeless situation. I asked my friends, and then I read on the Internet that during an alarm, the GPS goes off and the geolocation of your device can be thrown to Kursk or Gomel," says a user under the nickname @alexeyglazunov_art.

"I personally encountered this problem and really need help," notes @valeriivolkovua.

"I was blocked after being asked to confirm my place of residence... I sent and received a message that it was successfully confirmed, and then the block was permanent with no possibility of appeal. I was depressed, I had been developing my profile for almost 4 years," Yuriy wrote on Telegram.

"I have over 15 accounts banned for 'nothing', aka 'irregular activity', which no one could ever explain," wrote a user under the nickname Revorved.

Appeal to the Ministry of Digital Affairs

Kozak addressed this problem to the head of the Ministry of Digital Affairs, Mykhailo Fedorov: "External help is needed here. Upwork is one of the few platforms that really gave Ukrainians the opportunity to survive and scale during the war. But the situation is critical now. If possible, please help with the escalation of this issue."

After this post on Threads, Kozak was contacted by representatives of the Ministry of Digital Affairs and asked to provide detailed information to resolve the problem at the state level.

Kozak also initiated the collection of appeals from Ukrainians who were banned from Upwork, in order to then transfer this data to the ministry.

What does the analysis of appeals show?

As of the evening of July 3, Kyrylo Kozak had received 40 cases from Ukrainians about being banned from Upwork. And the applications are still coming in.

"This is only 1/3 of the cases, and minus $1.2M-2M (many did not indicate how much they earned) in income for Ukrainians, which I was able to analyze with 3 AI agents. But every minute I get more and more. I really feel bad for all of us," Kozak noted about his analysis.

To do this, he used three AI tools: Claude Opus, o3-pro, and Google Notebook LM.

Later, it became known about more than 100 cases of bans.

"Received 100+ chaotic cases. Need a structure for AI analysis and further transmission. Each structured case = a step towards unlocking all Ukrainians," Kozak wrote in his Telegram on the evening of July 4.

He was also contacted by an Upwork representative on July 4. His name is Ivan and he offered to help: "I've connected everyone, it's just going to take time."

UPDATED. 07/08/2025 10:15

Kyrylo Kozak analyzed all the applications received from affected Ukrainians and determined which cities IT users are most often banned from, what are the likely reasons, and what needs to be done to avoid being blocked.

Cities by number of baths:

Lviv — 29 cases (22.8%);
Kyiv — 25 cases (19.7%);
Kharkiv — 13 cases (10.2%);
Zaporizhia — 11 cases (8.7%);
Dnipro — 5 cases (3.9%);
Khmelnytskyi — 4 cases (3.1%);
Mykolaiv — 3 cases (2.4%);
Lutsk — 3 cases (2.4%);
Poltava — 2 cases (1.6%);
Rivne — 2 cases (1.6%).

Key issues:

93.7% filed appeals, but this rarely helped;
87.4% lost their only source of income during the war;
87.4% worked during air raids;
72.4% observed the pattern: successful verification, but then a ban after 24-48 hours;
48% had problems with IP due to electronic warfare (EW);
25.2% have an international team structure;
19.7% classified their regions as "OFAC territory."

To avoid a ban if you live near electronic warfare zones or work during airstrikes:

work from home using wired internet, not mobile;
avoid working on your phone during alarms;
do not use the Upwork mobile app from a mobile device;
do not use a VPN because it is often defined as an anomaly;
It is better for agency owners to log in from one location (IP) and have the same digital fingerprint;
In Dnipro, some providers provided Crimean IP addresses, so it is worth checking the IP address.

Kozak transferred all the data to the Ministry of Digital Affairs and Upwork. And on the evening of July 7, he reported that Upwork had responded and reviewed all the victims who had filled out the ban form. This involved 130 applications.

"Good. Some will be unbanned! We weren't told who specifically," Kozak wrote.

He also believes that now is a good opportunity to write an additional email to the platform's email address.

"I will try to create a gateway to unbanning through the Ministry of Digital Affairs, I don't know how long it will take," he added.