Ukraine to launch an NFT collection to mark Russia’s invasion

The Ukrainian government is planning to launch a non-fungible token (NFT) collection to mark the history of Russia’s invasion. A report unveiled this news earlier today, citing Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation, Alex Bornyakov, who said the collection would be like a digital museum of the Russian-Ukrainian war.

According to Bornyakov, each NFT in the collection would contain art representing a story from a trusted news source. He said Ukraine wants the collection to be cool and good-looking. The country’s emphasis on creating appealing NFTs is mainly because it seeks to raise more funds through its sale.

So far, the Ukrainian government has raised over $60 million through crypto. Some of these funds came from the sale of NFTs in the Censored collection, which was co-created by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and digital artist Pak. The government also received a CryptoPunk NFT worth over $200,000.

Bornyakov said the Ukrainian government has not yet used these funds to purchase weapons. Instead, it has bought military equipment like night vision goggles, thermal imagers, helmets, bulletproof vests, and walkie-talkies. Apart from buying military equipment, the government is also using the money to fund media activities.

Thanking the crypto community for standing with Ukraine, he said,

Crypto assets proved extremely helpful in facilitation of funding flows to the Amed [sic] Forces of Ukraine. Huge thanks to everyone who donated to the Crypto Fund of Ukraine. Each and every helmet and vest bought via crypto donations is currently saving Ukrainian soilders' [sic] lives.

Fighting Russia digitally

Further touting the digital world, Bornyakov said Ukraine’s digital diplomacy is coming to fruition, seeing as social platforms have blocked or labeled Russian state media content like Russia Today and Sputnik. According to him, social media is one of the Kremlin’s weapons in the war.

With platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram enforcing restrictive measures against Russian content, Bornyakov believes most of the Kremlin’s weapons are disabled. He added that this counts as positive results.

Hackers have also staged a series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against Russia, effectively disabling state-backed websites like Russia today.

Commenting on these efforts, Bornyakov said,

We just want to make them feel like we feel. Their [digital] war didn’t start 14 days ago. It started eight years ago, and they were constantly instantly attacking us with DDoS attacks, defacing websites or stealing our databases.