My russian blog

I maintained a blog on the LiveJournal platform (“Живой Журнал” in Russian) from 2012 through 2025.

I used to pay an annual fee for a “Pro” version—nothing more than a couple of hundred kronor.

Making payments became difficult starting in 2022, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent international sanctions. LiveJournal was well aware of this situation and extended my subscription—along with those of others affected by the sanctions-related blocks—for a three-month period without requiring payment. They sent a notification about this well in advance. The idea was to give us a little more time to resolve the payment issue, though perhaps there was also a glimmer of hope that the war would end and the sanctions against Russia would be lifted.

From the beginning (1999), LiveJournal’s servers were located in California, USA. However, the company had Russian owners. In 2017, the Russian owners decided to move their servers and most of their operations to Moscow. I was blogging actively during that period but noticed no major changes in how the platform was managed until 2022.

After the offer of a three-month grace period, I continued using the “Pro” version of my blog for two years without giving the matter much thought. By the autumn of 2024, I received a reminder that my subscription was about to expire and that it was finally time to try to process a payment. Which turned out to be impossible using Western payment cards. After two years! So, they had automatically extended my subscription well beyond the previously specified three-month period.

I wrote to LiveJournal, thanking them for the generous grace period and expressing regret that, despite repeated attempts, I had been unable to make the payment (there was—and still is—an option for Mastercard and Visa, but the transactions simply wouldn’t go through). I was granted a further year’s reprieve—explicitly one year—accompanied by a very kind reply.

I published posts on the blog only sporadically. It became mostly a place for personal notes, where I reacted to various events, offered commentary, and even illustrated spontaneous emotions—with posts ranging from the naive to the serious. Feedback was minimal, though I did have a few followers. In a Russian-speaking environment, my blog could be perceived as controversial, depending on how far into Russia it was accessible. For instance, I had voiced criticism of the Putin regime early on—during the 2014 annexation of Crimea—and later regarding the treatment of Navalny (which led to his death in 2024) and, not least, the full-scale invasion of 2022 and its aftermath. Judging by the statistics, however, the blog had quite a few readers—most of them likely outside Russia itself. The blog felt “warm,” even though overt responses were mostly absent.

But in 2025, that was the end of the line; the blog was downgraded to the free version. I then found some “customer points” that allowed me to pay for a month extending from late 2025 into 2026. I had shut down the blog earlier in the year while considering how to proceed, but tried to reopen it this September. I can access the blog, but I cannot publish anything new. Furthermore, my previous posts are marked as “private” and cannot be made public.

At the same time I shut down my Russian blog, I also closed the blog I write in Swedish, as well as the one I write in English.

I notice that LiveJournal’s rules have become stricter, accompanied by various excuses for why it is no longer possible to link accounts to Facebook or Twitter, use payment cards as before, or use “boost” features. It is also impossible to publish posts for the general public unless one meets one of four criteria. One of these is having a “Pro” account—something I would certainly like to have but cannot afford to pay for. Yet.

I hope the war ends soon. Above all, considering the horrific suffering inflicted upon people in both Ukraine and Russia. The fact that—despite my posts criticizing Putin—I received such support from administrators of a purely Russian blogging platform has become, for me, one of several hopeful signs that the war and hostilities might eventually come to an end.

My Russian blog—the “Votivsyo” blog—is transferred, post by post , from https://votivsyo.livejournal.com/ to a new blog on the Blogger platform –