LONDON: Ukraine’s government has raised cryptocurrency worth almost $13 million after posting appeals on social media for donations of bitcoin and other digital tokens, data from blockchain analysis firm Elliptic showed on Monday.

Ukraine’s official Twitter account made the appeal for cryptocurrency donations on Saturday following the country’s invasion by Russia, posting digital wallets addresses for tokens including bitcoin and ether.

“Stand with the people of Ukraine. Now accepting cryp­to­­­currency donations,” Ukraine’s Vice-Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who is also minister of digital transformation, wrote on Twitter.

US, Canada ban transactions with Russian central bank

The donations came as Russian forces seized two small cities in southeastern Ukraine and the area around a nuclear power plant, the Interfax news agency said, but ran into stiff resistance elsewhere as Moscow’s diplomatic and economic isolation deepened.

Unprecedented sanction

The United States and Canada on Monday banned all transactions with Russia’s central bank, effective immediately, in an unprecedented sanction meant to punish the country for its invasion of Ukraine.

These new moves, along with others taken by allies in Europe, will make it hard for the Russian central bank to use its vast reserves of hard currency to buy rubles, the value of which collapsed against the dollar and euro on the Moscow Stock Exchange.

Transactions to support the ruble, “will no longer be possible and fortress Russia will be exposed,” a senior US administration official told reporters.

Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said the ban is meant “to ensure that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will be a strategic failure.” “Canada is firmly on the side of the heroic resistance of the people of Ukraine and we will continue to take further action to ensure President Putin does not succeed,” she said in a statement.

The US official said the package of coordinated sanctions will create a “vicious feedback loop,” and Moscow “will be forced to deplete their domestic rainy day fund far more quickly, experience a weakening of their currency making funding their war of choice much more expensive.” “Inflation is very likely to spike. Purchasing power is likely to plummet.

Investment is likely to plummet,” the official said.

Russian flights bans

In Moscow, Russia has closed its airspace to airlines from 36 countries, including all 27 members of the European Union, in response Ukraine-related sanctions targeting its aviation sector.

Some of the banned countries had already been identified, while others were named by the aviation authority Rosaviatsia for the first time on Monday following the punitive measures imposed over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The flight bans are expected to hurt airlines that fly over the world’s biggest country to get from Europe to Asia. They are likely to force them to find new routes.

Rosaviatsia said that flights from those countries could in exceptional circumstances be authorised if they secure special clearance from Russia’s aviation authority or foreign ministry.

Published in Dawn, March 1st, 2022