On Wednesday, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, said in his mother tongue that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ‘is a crime against the Ukrainian and Russian people.’ 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 advant...
