Ukraine’s embattled government has called on crypto exchanges to block Russian users from using their crypto wallets to try to evade global sanctions. To find out how that effort is working, I talked to a Ukrainian lawyer who has been helping collect information about the crypto assets of Russian politicians.

“This is our personal war, because, for me, my four-month-old son woke up because of bombs,” said Artem Afian in a voice message over the Telegram app from Ukraine early this week. Afian is a former government adviser on crypto who owns the Telegram account collecting information about the crypto wallets of powerful Russians.