'Glory To Ukraine': ETH Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin Throws Shade On Putin Over Russia-Ukraine War

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin's attack on Ukraine, saying, "This is a crime against the Ukrainian and Russian people."

Buterin was born and lived in Kolomna, Russia, until he was six, and grew up in Canada after his family emigrated to the country for better opportunities. Sharing his thoughts on the events taking place between Russia and Ukraine, Buterin said he was "very upset" about Putin's decision of abandoning "the possibility of a peaceful solution to the dispute with Ukraine and going to war instead."

Buterin said the decision is not only a "crime against the Ukrainian" but also against Russian people. "I want to wish everyone security, although I know that there will be no security. Glory to Ukraine," read his tweet.

The Russian-Canadian programmer also reminded in a follow-up tweet that while Ethereum is neutral, he is certainly not. His tweet surfaced after Putin announced Wednesday night that Russia's armed forces will carry out a "special military operation" in Ukraine.

Following the news, prices of cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin tumbled. Bitcoin was down 8.39% at $34,857.94 with a 24-hour volume of $31,723,046,736 as of 2:48 a.m. ET on Thursday.

Ethereum was down 12.23 % at $2,338.49, with a volume of $18,972,446,395; Dogecoin was down 15% at $0.1121, with a 24-hour volume of $1,237,557,378, according to data from Coinmarketcap.

This is not the first time that Buterin dropped has strong words against a country. Recently, he slammed Canada's efforts to prevent protesting truckers from accessing their bank accounts and crypto funds.

While he acknowledged that the disruption caused by the truckers' protest was unlawful, he said it should not have been met with a restrictive move that blocked them from having access to funds. "If the truckers are blocking the roads and that's breaking the economy, fine, blocking the roads is illegal and there are laws against that," Buterin said in a recent interview with Coindesk.

"If the government is not willing to follow the laws ... [and] give people a chance to defend themselves ... and they just want to talk to the banks and basically cut out people's financial livelihoods without due process, that is an example of the sort of thing that decentralized technology is there to make more difficult," the he said.