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(Adds comment from Ukraine's deputy minister of digital transformation)
By Paresh Dave and Jeffrey Dastin
OAKLAND, Calif., March 2 (Reuters) - Ukrainians working at Western tech companies are banding together to help their besieged homeland, aiming to knock down disinformation websites, encourage Russians to turn against their government, and speed delivery of medical supplies.
They are seeking, through email campaigns and online petitions, to persuade firms such as internet security company Cloudflare Inc, Alphabet Inc's Google and Amazon.com Inc to do more to counter Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"Companies should try to isolate Russia as much as possible, as soon as possible," said Olexiy Oryeshko, a staff software engineer at Google and a Ukrainian American. "Sanctions are not enough."
He was one of nine tech activists interviewed by Reuters who are of Ukrainian heritage or are Ukrainian immigrants and are responding to a call by Kyiv to form a volunteer "IT army."
Many companies have severed Russian ties due to new government trade curbs, but the activists are demanding more.
They are appealing to cybersecurity companies in particular, asking them to drop Russian clients, especially publishers of what they say is disinformation. If that happens, the publishers would be more vulnerable to online attacks.
Igor Seletskiy, chief executive of Palo Alto-based software maker CloudLinux, has pleaded for Cloudflare to drop several Russian news websites.
"Given that even Switzerland took sides, I think it would be an important statement if Cloudflare would do the same," he wrote in an email to top executives, which he shared with Reuters.
Cloudflare said it terminated some clients because of sanctions and has begun reviewing accounts flagged in Seletskiy's email, adding that it was proceeding cautiously because cutting ties would jeopardize customer security.
Spurred on by bombs exploding outside his parents' home last week and concerned for the safety of a few of his Ukrainian colleagues who had not recently checked in, Vlad Goloshuk has appealed to a swathe of companies to help pressure Russia.
More than a dozen, among them security and web hosting providers, said they would do what they can. Some have dropped Russian customers or were considering doing so, according to replies shown to Reuters by Goloshuk, CEO of BrightestMinds, a company that helps businesses generate sales leads.
Philipp Lypniakov, who works for Spanish delivery app Glovo and has supported efforts to take down Russian websites, said he hopes the "IT war" will protect Ukraine.