"Russia’s Attack On Ukraine is a Crime," Says Vitalik Buterin
He said:
“Very upset by Putin's decision to abandon the possibility of a peaceful solution to the dispute with Ukraine and go to war instead."
President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia would execute a 'special military operation' in Ukraine, a barely veiled reference to a complete invasion, after recognizing the independence of two separatist areas in eastern Ukraine earlier this week.
Buterin tweeted earlier this month, 'An attack on Ukraine can only harm Russia, Ukraine, and mankind,' pleading with Putin to de-escalate a situation of Russia's own making.
Vitalik’s Russian Connection
Buterin was born in Russia in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union before fleeing to Canada with his family in 2000, the same year Putin was elected president.
Vitalik's father, Dmitry, has strong feelings about Russia's strongman. 'He's KGB,' he said in an interview in early 2021, 'and those are the people who tortured and killed millions of Russians and Ukrainians.'
Vitalik has dabbled with diplomacy. In 2017, he met with Putin to try to persuade Russia to join the Ethereum network. Putin has slammed cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. He recently defied Russia's central bank by stating that the country's energy resources give it 'some competitive advantages' when it comes to Bitcoin mining. According to a 2019 Wired story, Russia could 'end run' US sanctions by mining Bitcoin in former Soviet territories.
So Far, Not Much Good For Crypto in Russia
Cryptocurrency, whose attitude tends to run as opposed to dictatorship, has never been completely embraced by Putin or Russia. By design, distributed blockchains, which are managed by thousands of people throughout the world, are non-partisan and decentralized. Nonetheless, they are established by people with political agendas.