Q&A with Ukraine Deputy Minister for Information Transformation Oleksandr Bornyakov on Ukraine's “IT Army”, cybersecurity, and betting on crypto donations
Context & Ripple Effects
This Q&A with Deputy Minister Oleksandr Bornyakov lands in the first weeks of Russia's invasion, when Ukraine was assembling its digital war footing in public: a volunteer 'IT Army' for offensive and defensive cyber work, and a state crypto-donation channel pitched directly to a global online audience. It sits alongside vice PM Mykhailo Fedorov's own interview days later covering digital public services, corporate sanctions, and Clearview AI facial recognition — the same ministry running a coordinated media campaign about waging war through software.
The bet paid off fast enough to be measured: by April 1, Bornyakov told The Block the government's crypto donation platform had raised $70M+, turning an experimental fundraising idea from this March interview into one of the conflict's most-cited financing stories. Two years on, TechCrunch returned to the same beat with Ukraine's Cyberpolice chief Yevhenii Panchenko, showing the cyber apparatus born in those first weeks had become a permanent institution.
First-order effects
- Ukraine gains a distributed volunteer cyber force it can direct without conscripting or formally enlisting foreign hackers, plus a censorship-resistant donation rail that lets individuals worldwide fund the state directly in crypto.
- Bornyakov's ministry gets a template for communicating the war to the tech industry — the same playbook Fedorov extends with his own Q&A on sanctions and digital services.
Second-order effects
- Pro-Russian hacking groups organize in response, forcing Ukraine to stand up dedicated policing of its own cyber battlespace — the mandate Panchenko's Cyberpolice Department is still executing in 2024.
- The crypto channel's success pressures other governments and NGOs to treat digital-asset fundraising as standard crisis infrastructure rather than an experiment.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, wartime states institutionalize volunteer cyber corps and crypto finance as standing capabilities rather than emergency measures — Ukraine's 2024-era Cyberpolice interviews suggest exactly that consolidation.
- The line between civilian tech ministries and military operations blurs structurally, making digital infrastructure a recognized domain of national defense.
The trend: Wartime states are converting ad-hoc digital mobilization — volunteer hacker armies and crypto donation rails — into permanent institutions of national defense.