Ukraine hit by banking and payment outages after Trump cuts funding

Ukraine’s financial system collapsed into chaos Saturday as major banks, payment services, and digital platforms across the country crashed at once, according to Bloomberg.

People across Ukraine said they couldn’t swipe cards at retail stores, hop on public transport, or pay for taxi rides. Mobile payment apps like Apple Pay were also dead, leaving thousands stuck without ways to pay for basic goods and services.

Serhiy Naumov, the CEO of Oshchadbank, Ukraine’s government-run savings bank, said on Telegram that a large data center used by the bank had gone down. Naumov confirmed the crash caused widespread banking disruptions.

Meanwhile, Nova Poshta, the country’s biggest private post office and a company that now operates outside the country, posted on Facebook that its services had been taken offline due to “technical problems.”

Diia, Ukraine’s national digital services platform, also stopped working. The Ministry of Digital Transformation said a technical update at one of its major data centers triggered the collapse.

U.S. funding cuts strip Ukraine’s cyber defenses

Even though nobody has officially blamed cyberattacks yet, Ukraine has been under nonstop cyber pressure ever since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. As Cryptopolitan reported on Friday, American efforts to help the European nation defend itself have been gutted by Donald Trump’s new White House policies.

After Trump was sworn in this January, the administration moved fast to slash budgets across U.S. agencies. Ukraine felt the cuts harder than almost anyone else.

Cybersecurity support, military shipments, and even intelligence cooperation all dried up. Critics say Trump’s White House is pushing Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to accept a peace deal that leans heavily toward Russia’s interests.

Over the last five years, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) poured more than $200 million into Ukraine’s cybersecurity efforts.

The National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command also pitched in with technical support, equipment, and training. Their help kept Ukraine’s government ministries, national bank, telecommunications companies, and power providers running even under heavy Russian cyberattacks.

Those lifelines have been yanked. USAID, once Ukraine’s biggest cybersecurity backer, was gutted by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) starting in February. Musk said on X that USAID was “interfering with governments worldwide” and “pushing radical left politics,” but he didn’t show any evidence for his claims.

Cybersecurity contracts collapse after White House cuts

Dozens of cybersecurity contractors working in Ukraine and the United States have had their deals canceled or frozen, according to eight people familiar with the matter who allegedly spoke to Bloomberg. These were the people helping Ukraine stop Russian hackers from crashing power plants and infiltrating the Cabinet of Ministers, the country’s executive leadership body.

American grants had funded cybersecurity at government offices, election infrastructure, gas and energy companies, and even nuclear sites. Some programs were greenlit during Trump’s first term, but the second Trump administration cut them off without warning.

The situation got even worse after Russia’s February 2022 invasion, when USAID sharply increased cybersecurity funding to help Ukraine survive the flood of new attacks. Now, with Musk leading the drive to dismantle foreign aid programs, even that backup is gone.

This week, Vice President JD Vance warned that if the warring European nations don’t accept the Trump-backed peace deal, the United States might ditch the peace process altogether. That move could slam the door on any future cybersecurity assistance.

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