Jorgelina do Rosario, Karin Strohecker

LONDON, (Reuters) – Ukraine is seeking new sources of funding to finance its defense efforts. A source close to the matter said Friday that Ukraine was looking into ways to expand a national bond issuance program to international capital markets.

In late February, Kyiv started a program selling bonds in hryvnia to raise funds for the fight against Russia. It was called “war bonds”. It stated that it intended to raise approximately $1.36 million through its domestic programme.

Sources said that the government of Ukraine now hopes to establish an international fixed income instrument, which will most likely be made in U.S. dollar in the coming months.

According to Reuters, “Ukraine has received support not only from its official creditors, but also from the broader Ukrainian diaspora as well as international regulatory authorities,” said the source.

Sources say the idea was to expand the current domestic bond program to an international audience. The source also said that the government wanted to raise as much money as possible, possibly “hundreds upon millions”

It wasn’t clear whether bonds would target a retail audience, including large diasporas in the country, or institutional investors.

The Ukraine’s Finance Ministry did not respond immediately to our request for comment.

Numerous developing countries have used Diaspora bonds in a number of successful ways. Israel has been one of the most notable, raising tens to billions of US dollars through them since 1951.

Diaspora funds helped India to get out of a 1991 imbalanced payments crisis and raised $4.2 billion for 1998. This was in addition to international sanctions that were imposed following nuclear testing.

Since Russian invade began, Ukraine has had contributions come in in the form of cash and in cryptocurrencies. Most of these came from its large diaspora.