“For Canva, as an iconic Australian company, this darling unicorn that is all soft and fluffy and claims to be driven by pure ideals, for this company to leave Russia is critically important for us,” he said.

In an emailed statement, Canva’s spokesman Lachlan Andrews said the company had held discussions with Ukrainian communities, donated $1 million to Ukrainian contributors and charities on the ground, and created pro-peace design templates that have been used more than 275,000 times globally.

He said Canva’s terms of use prohibited its service from being used to promote violence and while the company had not seen that occurring, it would not hesitate to act if it did.

“Since early March, we’ve had prominent banners visible in both our global product (including Russia) highlighting the illegal war in Ukraine and the templates available to join the calls for peace,” Andrews said. “We’ve long accepted the fact that taking this outspoken approach is likely to result in Canva being blocked by the Russian government, however, until then, we believe we have an important responsibility to use our reach, particularly with our 1.4 million users in Russia, to promote truth and accurate information.”

The Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, a non-profit affiliated with America’s prestigious Yale University that acts as a management training and professional development organisation, rates companies from A for completely severing ties with Russia - which has been awarded to firms such as the streaming service Netflix - through to F, for continuing to work in the country. Canva is the only Australian company awarded the F grade.

Canva’s Andrews said the company had asked the organisation to correct what it sees as a misrepresentation. “While Canva is still available in Russia, we’ve taken similar actions to many of the higher-rated companies by blocking all payments and proactively displaying our opposition to the war,” he said.

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Another Australian tech giant, Atlassian, drew internal criticism for its initially milquetoast approach to Russia’s invasion. It later apologised and toughened its stance by halting sales and suspending software licenses, though it said it would not terminate licenses held by Russian small businesses.

Russia has been accused of war crimes, having devastated Ukrainian cities since its unprovoked invasion of the country in early February. Its military has been revealed to be much less powerful than analysts had expected, and fierce Ukrainian resistance has handed it a series of defeats including pushing back a Russian attempt to take the capital, Kyiv. The conflict is now centred on the east of Ukraine, where the two armies are fighting village by village.