Ukraine has denounced this Friday a massive cyberattack against several websites of the country’s government, which managed to include threatening messages against Ukrainians on them. “Be afraid and expect the worst,” they said. The computer attack, which has left several state pages out of service for hours, occurs at a time of high tension built up by the concentration of Russian troops near the Ukrainian borders, and follows the failed end of diplomatic talks between Moscow, United States, NATO and Western allies to try to de-escalate the situation and dissuade Russian President Vladimir Putin from launching a new military aggression against Kiev. After the abrupt outcome of the negotiations, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, has stressed that Moscow has “run out of patience” and is seeking written guarantees that NATO will not expand towards Russian borders. “The West has been driven by arrogance and has exacerbated tensions in violation of its obligations and common sense,” Lavrov insisted.
No group has claimed responsibility for the cyberattack, which has affected several Ukrainian bodies, such as the Cabinet of Ministers, the Foreign Ministry, the Education Ministry or the Emergency Services department. The Ukrainian Executive has not directly pointed to Moscow, although it has recalled the history of similar attacks in the past from Russia. For weeks now, Ukrainian and Western experts and senior officials have warned of the possibility of cyberattacks against Ukraine as a formula to destabilize the country as a prelude to further military action.
The hackers managed to post on the targeted web pages an intimidating message addressed to Ukrainians and written in three languages: Ukrainian, Russian and Polish: “Ukrainians! All your personal data has been posted on the network. Be afraid and expect the worst. All data on the computer is destroyed and cannot be recovered. All the information about you has been made public (…) This is for your past, present and future”, stated the text, accompanied by various threatening symbols, including a crossed out Ukrainian flag, and which raised a series of historical grievances between Poland and Ukraine.
The Ukrainian state security service (SBU) speaks of “provocative messages” and has assured that it has information that the Russian special services are preparing actions to later blame Kiev, even in neighboring Moldova, where Russia has had troops in for decades. the separatist region of Transnistria in the form of “peacekeepers”. The attack has brought down dozens of websites and lasted several hours, although the Ukrainian government assures that there has been no security hole that would expose data of its citizens, despite the fact that some of the attacked sites, such as the platform of public services Diia, which collects vaccination certificates, store sensitive information.
The high representative of foreign policy of the European Union, Josep Borrell, has expressed his “strongest condemnation” of the cyber attack. “Sadly, we knew this could happen. Of course I can’t point the finger at anyone because I have no evidence, but we can imagine”, he said upon arriving at a meeting in Brest (France) with the EU foreign ministers.
Ukraine has suffered a series of cyberattacks since 2014, which, in previous episodes, managed to cut off electricity or disable supermarket checkouts, and forced the government to adopt additional security measures around the national currency, the hryvnia, after that the computer systems of the banks collapsed. The Kiev authorities believe that these attacks are part of what they define as a “hybrid war” by Russia against Ukraine.
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In 2017, a virus called NotPetya by some experts affected the former Soviet republic and spread throughout the world, paralyzing thousands of computers while proliferating in dozens of countries. The Kremlin denied any involvement and called these accusations baseless.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has stated that the cyber experts of the Atlantic Alliance – in which Ukraine aspires to join but for which there is still no prospect on the table – are already working with the Ukrainian authorities to respond to attack, both remotely from headquarters in Brussels and on the ground in Ukraine. NATO has also announced that in a few days it will sign a closer cooperation agreement on cyber defense with Kiev, which will give Ukraine access to the Western military alliance’s system to share information on malicious software.
The United States ambassador to NATO, Julianne Smith, pointed out this Friday to the Financial Times that it is analyzing the situation and that Washington awaits more data on the cyberattack. If the hack is proven to be Russian, he said, “certainly” it could be seen as an example of aggression against Kiev and lead to new sanctions against Moscow.
Russia threatens to deploy military equipment
Russia has started these days new military maneuvers near Ukraine and in the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed with a referendum considered illegal by the international community. Exercises to which more mobilizations have been added this Friday and that add to the already electric atmosphere due to the accumulation of some 100,000 Russian soldiers next to Ukraine, which has made US intelligence fear that Moscow is preparing a new military aggression.
Minister Lavrov insisted this Friday that Moscow will not wait “tirelessly” for a security agreement with NATO, for which he blamed the United States. “We are sure that with good will, a willingness to compromise, it is always possible to find a mutually acceptable solution,” Lavrov declared at his annual press conference, in which he assured that Washington had slipped that it could respond to these proposals in one week. “At the same time, we continue to prepare for any possible course of events,” added the minister, who pointed out, without specifying, that the failure of the negotiations could involve the “deployment” of military material.
Although it gives a touch of whitewash, the tone of Russia is increasingly elevated. On Thursday, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov refused to rule out a military deployment to Cuba and Venezuela if tensions with the United States escalate. Ryabkov, who led the Russian delegation in the talks with the US these days, assured in an interview with the Russian television channel RTVI that he could “neither confirm nor exclude” the possibility of Moscow sending military assets to Latin America if Washington and its allies do not restrict their military activities at the door of Russia.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has called the comment “bragging”. The Atlantic Alliance has already stressed that it will not grant Moscow the right to veto accession to NATO and that Russia has no voice in the expansion process of the military Alliance or in matters that concern the sovereignty of other countries.
The idea that Ukraine is getting closer to the West and moving away from Russia’s orbit is one of the main concerns of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who in recent times has deepened his thesis that Russians and Ukrainians are “ one people” and that Ukraine is on its way to becoming a NATO “aircraft carrier”. As he demonstrated in 2014, by annexing the Crimean peninsula and by politically and militarily supporting the pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and Lugansk, who are fighting the Kiev Army, for the Kremlin leader keeping Ukraine under his thumb is one of the main workhorses of Russian foreign policy.
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