“Donations to Ukraine has varied from one dollar to millions of dollars,” said Ukraine’s deputy digital minister, Alex Bornyakov.

“The Russian people who have donated have sent significant amounts of money. I understand that from within Russia there is no other way for them to do this other than through crypto,” he added.

The comments come nearly one year after Russia’s large-scale military invasion of Ukraine.

Since then, more than 100,000 people have sent aid to Ukraine using crypto currency, one-third of which came via the Crypto Fund Aid for Ukraine initiative, powered by Ukraine-based Kuna platform and blockchain company Everstake, with the support of the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine.

Most asset donations to Ukraine are in bitcoin, ethereum, cardano, solana, polkadot and stablecoins such as USDC  and USDT.

“So far Ukraine has received around 650 bitcoins, more than 10,000 ethereum, and there was also a significant amount of polkadot, almost 1.8 million in solana and $2.8m in the form of the USDC stablecoin,” Bornyakov said on February 2.