

Ukrainian government websites began crashing a few hours later, according to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, which said the cyberattack occurred overnight from Thursday to Friday.īy morning, the hack had crippled much of the government’s public-facing digital infrastructure, including the most widely used site for handling government services online, Diia. “This is what we call a dead end or a different approach,” Mr.
/ccleaner-registry-71d62b7d2030477b8f817819a7319574.png)
Ryabkov, said after the last round of talks on Thursday that, “the United States and its allies are actually saying ‘no’ to key elements of these texts,” referring to two draft treaties on security issues that Russia had proposed to NATO and the United States. Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei A. On Thursday, Russian officials said the talks had not yielded results, and one senior diplomat said they were approaching “a dead end.” But the cyberattack Friday led to immediate pledges of support and closer cooperation with Ukraine from NATO and the European Union, exactly the opposite of what Russian diplomats had said they were seeking. Moscow has demanded sweeping security concessions, including a promise not to accept Ukraine into the NATO alliance. The White House did not release details of the evidence it said it had collected. On Friday, the Biden administration also accused Moscow of sending saboteurs into eastern Ukraine to stage an incident that could provide Russia with a pretext for invasion. The attack came within hours of the conclusion of talks between Russia and the United States and NATO that were intended to find a diplomatic resolution after Russia massed tens of thousands of troops near the border with Ukraine. Be afraid and expect the worst.” It also raised a number of historical grievances between Poland and Ukraine. “All data on the computer is being destroyed. “Ukrainians! All your personal data was uploaded to the internet,” the message read.

The message was posted in three languages - Ukrainian, Russian and Polish - in what seemed like an effort to obfuscate the origins of the hackers and their motives, and shift blame and suspicion elsewhere. “We suggest the current attack is tied to the recent failure of Russian negotiations on Ukraine’s future in NATO,” it added, referring to Moscow’s talks with the West. “We have not seen such a significant attack on government organizations in some time,” it said. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry did not directly blame Russia for the attack, but pointedly noted that there was a long record of Russian online assaults against Ukraine.Ī Ukrainian government agency, the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security, which was established to counter Russian disinformation, later issued a statement more directly blaming Russia for the hack. KYIV, Ukraine - Hackers brought down dozens of Ukrainian government websites on Friday and posted a message on one saying, “Be afraid and expect the worst,” a day after a breakdown in diplomatic talks between Russia and the West intended to forestall a threatened Russian invasion of the country.ĭiplomats and analysts have been anticipating a cyberattack on Ukraine, but proving the source of such actions is notoriously difficult.
