UPDATE – Belarus callsigns have also been removed from the QRZ.com database.

We were alerted that all Russian amateur radio callsigns have been removed from the huge QRZ.com database. We checked for ourselves and sure enough they are.

Here’s the reason according to AA7BQ, the founder and publisher of QRZ.com….

Why We Blocked Russian Call Signs

Two groups of people will read this. One will implicitly understand and the other will be confused. This message is for those who are confused.

After WWII, the world took a deep introspective look into the horrors that transpired, and collectively we all agreed that “This must never happen again”, and yet here we are again. Genocide is taking place in the 21st century and this time, we have video. No KGB-style cover story can smooth this one over. I can think of no other army in history that drove into battle with mobile crematoria so that the dead could be quickly disposed of and forgotten. Their aim is to incinerate any “problems” which range from women and children of the enemy to their own unwilling conscripts. It’s nightmare food. It’s KGB SOP.

The average Russian, good people that they are, love their country and they may as well, because they literally are ordered to. Putin, who was a career KGB officer, never stopped believing in the cold war tactics that he grew up with. He’s confident that by carefully manipulating the media, radio, TV, and by crushing protests dead in their tracks that they can pull off the big heist with no one the wiser. What their government must hide is unmitigated genocide that no human being could tolerate.

Putin is quite simply the most hated man in the world. He has threatened all of us with nuclear destruction. He’s hoping that peace-loving people like us will “wish” this problem away and in a few weeks or months, he’ll have his prize. Wait a minute. We’re being threatened by nuclear weapons and our strategy is to hope it gets better, or to wait and see? Meanwhile, bombs are still falling and civilians are being crushed by falling buildings. Yeah, I hope that stops real soon. My hope must feel so good to them.

So what can we do? I’m not willing to do nothing. A GoFundMe isn’t going to fix this. Sending money isn’t really helpful at the moment.

What we can do is join with the rest of the civilized world in cutting Russia off from it. Putin may be strong, but he can’t hold back his own people, who eventually, after years of suffering in a post-Ukraine world, will certainly have his head. Nobody will be safe until Putin is gone and everybody needs to pitch in to make it happen. That means inconvenience. Yep, we can’t just sit here, chase DX and drink beers while someone else works it out. We must unite to destroy this man and anything that we can do to make the Russian people more uncomfortable furthers that goal. Right now, there are a bunch of people who think that everything is okay and that Putin is a hero, fighting for the motherland. They need to be disabused of that notion quickly, and we can help with that.

So that’s my reasoning. This “rise above politic” creed of the amateur applies only in peacetime. This ain’t peacetime.

73 -fred

There is also a poll running on the DX-World Twitter page. Comments are open here and on the DX-World Facebook page regarding this action.