In Secret Russian Citizens Help Ukraine With Cryptocurrency Donations

JAKARTA Not all Russian citizens agree that their government is fighting Ukraine. Russian citizens protesting against their country's war against Ukraine are now using cryptocurrencies to strengthen their protest voices.

In an interview with The Crypto Mile of Yahoo Finance on February 2, Ukraine's Deputy Digital Minister, Alex Bornyakov, said that there were various amounts of donations received, ranging from one dollar to millions of dollars.

According to Bornyakov, there are some Russian citizens who use crypto as an anonymous way to transfer money and some of them indeed donate a large amount of money to Ukraine. He added that this was due to limitations for Russian citizens to make donations in other ways than crypto.

This comment comes nearly a year after Russia's massive military invasion of Ukraine. Since then, more than 100,000 people have sent aid to Ukraine using cryptocurrencies, with a third of this number coming from the Crypto Fund Aid for Ukraine initiative.

This initiative is supported by Ukraine-based platform Kuna and blockchain company Everstake, and has received support from Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation.

Most of the donations received in the form of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Solana, Polkadot, and stablecoins such as USDC and USDT. Bornyakov said that to date, Ukraine has received around 650 Bitcoins, more than 10,000 Ethereums, as well as a large amount of Polkadot, nearly 1.8 million in solana, and 2.8 million US dollars (equivalent to Rp41.7 billion) in USDC stablecoins.