Over the past decade, Ukraine’s perpetual political instability and accumulated conflicts in the Donbas on the eastern border have fueled the proliferation of all kinds of volunteer groups assisting Kiev in its war with Russia, including neo-Nazi paramilitary militias such as the Azov Battalion. These organizations they have greased their war machine thanks to private donations that have traditionally been channeled through bank, but that are increasingly realized with Bitcoin.
Last year military funding through cryptocurrency it skyrocketed more than 900%, moving more than $ 570,000, according to a study published Tuesday by crypto analysis firm Elliptic. These donations have accelerated as tension grows in the East as an alternative that allows all kinds of groups and civil organizations not to condition their funding to entities that might block such payments as a result of, for example, sanctions. “Cryptocurrencies do not respect national borders and are resistant to censorship (…) is increasingly being used to finance the war with the tacit approval of governments,” said Tom Robinson, chief scientific officer at Elliptic.
The report notes that those donations with crypto assets have gone to non-governmental organizations such as ‘Come Back Alive’, which since the occupation of Crimea in 2014 it has been dedicated to raising funds for the purchase of military equipment, medical supplies and technology for the Ukrainian army as drones. During the second half of 2021 they raised more than $ 200,000 in Bitcoin donations.
Persecution of journalists
However, these transfers they have also served to feed much more opaque and controversial groups. It is the case of Myrotvorets Center, a website linked to the Ukrainian secret services that publishes personal information regarding those it considers “enemies of Ukraine”, whether they are prorussos politicians, mercenaries in the service of Moscow or journalists such as Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich. Some have been killed following his public denunciation. So, too he has exposed the data of up to 4,508 reporters who have been accredited to work in the Donbás region considering that they thus cooperated with the separatists, whom they consider terrorists.
This organization has also used the funds raised to develop a facial recognition application to identify Russian enemies. However, such systems are not accurate and can incur fatal errors. This initiative was also born in 2014, following the beginning of the armed conflict in the Donbás, and it is unknown who promoted it.
The third group benefited from the donations criptomonedas it is the Alliance Cyber Ukrainian, a collective that since 2016 has orchestrated cyber-attacks once morest targets russians as private military companies, the television channel Pervy or the websites of the self-proclaimed people’s Republic of Donetsk, supported by Moscow, and at war with Kiev, which has also turned to Bitcoin. This ‘hacker’ organization relies exclusively on cryptocurrency funding and last year raised more than $ 100,000.