A campaign launched to raise money to send Vladimir Putin 'to Jupiter' has surpassed reached £1.5 million in donations.
Putina.net has been set up to encourage people to "donate to help us build a rocket that will send a bloody dictator far far away", the website reads. "100 mln good citizens of the Earth can send the one Evil to Jupiter. Why Jupiter? It is a gas giant and the largest planet in the solar system."
The website - which has been set up for English, Russian and Ukrainian speakers - is operating under the guise of sending Putin away. However, its real purpose is to collect funds to help the armed forces of Ukraine and rebuild the country's destroyed infrastructure, as stated at the head of the website.
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'Send Putin to Jupiter' has already received more than $2 million in donations since its conception and has an overall target of $100 million.
When the two planets are at their closest point, Earth and Jupiter are 365 million miles away from each other - and 601 million miles at its farthest, according to Space.com. Depending on the mission, it can take around two years to six years to reach Jupiter from Earth. Although living on Jupiter would not be impossible, scientists predict if you were to step foot on the planet's core, "you would be crushed by the weight of the liquid hydrogen above".
State Enterprise Diia runs the account linked to the fundraiser, a state-owned company in Ukraine. The campaign appears to be linked to the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, a government department established in 2019 focusing on expanding expenditure in digitalisation. One of their key projects aims to bring 100 per cent of all government services online by 2024.
The website has been shared on Twitter by Mykhailo Fedorov, the country's first vice prime minister and the person who first established the ministry. In a Tweet in response to the campaign, he said "I am sure that @elonmusk can send Putin to Jupiter."
This was in reference to Musk's challenge shared on the social media platform yesterday whereby he challenged the Russian leader to 'single combat'. The business magnate is also the founder of private aerospace company SpaceX.
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