The Ukrainian government posted appeals on social media to raise funds, according to information provided by Elliptic, an analytics firm. This information was made public on February 28th, 2022. The country’s Twitter account posted appeals for donations in digital tokens and BTC after Russia’s invasion.
Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, Mykhailo Federov provided information on digital wallet addresses so that interested parties could send funding. He also appealed to the public to show solidarity and support for the Ukrainian people. Donations began pouring in as the Russian invasion and bombing campaigns began. As per the latest information, Ukraine has received about $13 million in funding from various sources.
In the meanwhile, Russian forces have captured two small towns in the southeaster part of Ukraine. This area has a nuclear plant. Russian forces are facing pushback from locals and the army. Europe, the US, and other countries have imposed stiff sanctions against Russia for its actions. Cut off from SWIFT, the global banking exchange system, Russia is in deep trouble as it is financially and diplomatically isolated.
As of 9 AM GMT on February 28th, the wallet addresses posted by Federov had received $12/8 million in donations. As previously mentioned, this information was gathered and published by Elliptic, an analytics firm based in London. Elliptic tracks digital and cryptocurrency movement on blockchains. These are public ledgers of all recorded crypto transactions.
The Ukrainian Digital Transformation Ministry said in a tweet that they were going to use this money to destroy as many Russian soldiers as possible. This kind of crowdfunding is new and unprecedented. Though countries like El Salvador have made crypto legal, Ukraine’s appeal for help with crypto donations is definitely the first. Donations in crypto to hacking and volunteer groups in Ukraine have also gone up substantially in the last week.
