- This is how the Russians are trying to circumvent sanctions
- The data is taken from the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
- The same time $212 million was raised for Ukrainians
A short time ago, the analytics company Elliptic published a report that wrote that about $20 million in cryptocurrency has been raised for Russian military groups since the war in Ukraine began.
A year after the start of the invasion of Ukraine, there was a highly publicized and successful campaign to raise cryptocurrency donations for Ukrainians. During that time, at least $212 million has been raised, representing 20 percent of the total amount raised.
“Pro-Russian donations are gradually increasing compared to donations in support of Ukraine,” the company said in a statement.
With among the organizations that use cryptopayments is a US-sanctioned group of Wagner PMC mercenaries called Task Force Rusich. In addition, Elliptic discovered that high-ranking representatives of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic used bitcoin to reward defectors and obtain intelligence on Ukrainian military positions.
Overly, the funds raised are laundered through centralized exchanges, more than 80 percent of the funds are laundered through centralized exchanges.. However, pro-Russian organizations under sanctions also engage with DeFi protocols, including decentralized exchanges, bridges, and NFT services.
Such as Alexander Zhuchkovsky, who is under U.S. sanctions, actively promoted Project Terricon, an NFT collection designed to raise funds to support russian military actions. However, the collection was quickly removed from the NFT Opensea trading platform before any funds were raised.
The collection was quickly removed from the NFT trading platform.