KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 27): Within the first week of the Russia-Ukraine war, the Ukrainian government has reached out to the crypto community on Twitter to raise funds in support of its civilians and troops.

Cryptocurrency news portal Cointelegraph on Sunday (Feb 27) said Ukraine has now started accepting Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Tether (USDT) as donations.

The portal said as Russia threatened to take over Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv, the government of Ukraine sought help from numerous international organisations to overpower the imminent threat.

However, considering time was of the essence, the official Twitter account of Ukraine extended its call for help to Crypto Twitter.

Cointelegraph said the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov also shared three crypto wallet addresses urging the crypto community to donate and help Ukraine fight against the Russian troops.

While the BTC and ETH addresses remain the same, Fedorov’s USDT wallet address is TRC20-based (different from the address shared by Ukraine’s office Twitter handle).

The report said crypto entrepreneurs including ETH co-founder Vitalik Buterin initially suspected that the accounts requesting crypto donations were hacked.

However, American diplomat Tomicah Tillemann later confirmed their legitimacy from Olexander Scherba, Ukraine's former Ambassador to Austria.

Meanwhile, as a direct result of the ongoing war, Ukrainian civilians-turned refugees have reported the loss of access to their fiat savings and credit cards.

The UN reported that over 150,000 people have been displaced from Ukraine as of Saturday (Feb 26).