Shortly after midnight on Saturday morning, one of the founders of Ukraine’s neobank Monobank, Serhei Horokhovsky, announced he had set up a crowdfunding “jar” to finance the creation of nuclear weapons for Ukraine.
Although he intended it as little more than a joke – he described it as “letting off steam after a hard day” – the banker was overwhelmed by the response. He said it took less than a minute to set up the “jar” but the news of it “spread quickly and this madness began.”
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He added that it “shows how sensitive this topic is for Ukraine” and “how much Ukrainians are hurt by what is happening.”
By 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, the fund had received Hr.27.2 million ($656,000), with donations not only coming from Ukrainians but from individuals from more than 60 other countries, including the US and Poland. Horokhovsky decided it was time to declare his true aims.
He told BBC Ukraine that no one thought he was seriously collecting to fund nuclear weapons, and that even though the amount collected over such a short time was impressive, the creation of nuclear weapons would involve a significantly larger order of magnitude.
He said it was intended as a means of reducing the tensions caused by the humiliation of President Volodymyr Zelensky [by US President Donald Trump and Vice President Vance] on Friday, which had upset many Ukrainians.
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“I’m sorry if I disappointed a lot of people... I don’t understand how this money that will be collected can be used for nuclear weapons, and I didn’t plan it,” he said, adding that if the objective had seriously been to buy nuclear weapons, it wouldn’t have been done so publicly.
He now proposed to spend the collected funds to purchase drones and humanitarian support for Ukraine’s forces on the front line through the Serhii Sternenko charity. He said that if anyone who had put in funds objected, he would reimburse them. So far no one has.
Horokhovsky said he had not coordinated his initiative with Ukrainian authorities. Still, he does not rule out his bank’s involvement if the government seeks to finance nuclear projects in the future.
“When it comes to the point that in the end it will be necessary to finance some such developments... if the state needs money, then we will contribute to it ourselves, if they turn to us. There are currently no nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and I certainly would not initiate such a project,” Horokhovsky said.
He said the main conclusion from this exercise was “that the unity [of Ukraine] is our strength.”
“I admire Ukrainians – their will, endurance, and strength. Glory to Ukraine!” he added.
Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in 1994 in exchange for security guarantees from the US, UK, and Russia via the Budapest Memorandum that were never realized when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and subsequently in 2022 during the full-scale invasion.
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