Opinion
That is details about donors, volunteers, and navy personnel that could possibly be vital from an intelligence and counterintelligence perspective
Main Common of the Safety Service of Ukraine, former Deputy Head of the Safety Service of Ukraine
This story, which at first look might need appeared like simply one other occasion of Russian repression, really raises a much wider query: how properly protected is the non-public data of customers on main worldwide cryptocurrency exchanges when Russian regulation enforcement businesses take an curiosity in it?
The person in query is 49-year-old IT specialist Yuri Belyenko, a Russian citizen with a Bulgarian residence allow. In September 2025, he was detained at a Moscow airport and later charged with “financing terrorism” due to cryptocurrency transfers in assist of Ukraine. Russian investigators declare that the funds had been directed, particularly, to assist the Ukrainian navy.
On August 17, Reuters, citing supplies from the felony case, confirmed that in 2025, Binance supplied the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation with info that made it potential to hyperlink particular transactions to Belyenky. The knowledge supplied included his date of beginning, deal with, cellphone quantity, passport particulars, a replica of his Russian passport and Bulgarian residence allow, in addition to transaction particulars.
The human rights challenge “First Division,” which acquired case supplies from Belyenko’s family, claims that the scope of the knowledge supplied was even broader: KYC data, info on account balances, cryptocurrency deposits and withdrawals, P2P transactions, login historical past, machine data, geolocation, and different technical info. After receiving a response from Binance, the investigation, in accordance to human rights activists, uncovered extra transfers and expanded the scope of the costs.
It’s significantly telling that Binance introduced its full withdrawal from the Russian market as early as 2023. On the similar time, paperwork reviewed by Reuters point out that in 2025, Russian regulation enforcement businesses nonetheless had a separate channel for contacting the corporate. Moreover, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation requested that the identities of different customers who had transferred funds to the identical crypto pockets be recognized. It’s at present unknown whether or not the Russian aspect acquired this info.
Binance, for its half, states that, like different world monetary establishments, it complies with lawful requests from regulation enforcement businesses in accordance with relevant legal guidelines, privateness necessities, and regulatory requirements. The corporate declined to touch upon the particular case.
However this raises one other essential subject—a European one. Belyenky held a Bulgarian residence allow. On August 20, the European Fee, with out commenting on the particular case, emphasised that the switch of private and transactional data from the EU to third international locations is ruled by the GDPR, and Russia doesn’t have an EU resolution on an ample stage of private data safety. In different phrases, there isn’t a unconditional and unrestricted switch of such data between the EU and Russia. Whether or not the GDPR was violated in Belyenky’s case has not but been legally established.
For us, the lesson to be realized from this story goes far past the destiny of a single individual.
Cryptocurrency doesn’t equal anonymity. A public blockchain permits for the monitoring of funds, and a centralized exchange with KYC procedures can hyperlink a selected transaction to passport info, a cellphone quantity, a tool, and a selected particular person.
In occasions of warfare, such huge quantities of knowledge are now not merely industrial or private data. They represent info that’s doubtlessly vital for intelligence and counterintelligence functions—details about donors, volunteers, navy personnel, support recipients, and the connections between them.
Due to this fact, any delicate transactions performed by centralized crypto companies should be evaluated simply as fastidiously as transactions performed by a conventional financial institution: if the middleman is aware of who you might be and whom you might be paying, it’s best to assume that, underneath sure circumstances, this info might find yourself within the palms of a 3rd social gathering.
Binance’s historical past is not any purpose to surrender on cryptocurrencies.
It is a purpose to lastly abandon the phantasm that know-how itself routinely ensures anonymity and safety.
It is a machine translation of the unique article in Ukrainian. It might comprise errors.
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