Local citizens visit their home in the separatist-controlled territory to collect belongings after a recent shelling near a frontline outside Donetsk,eastern Ukraine in April.Credit:AP
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Friday dismissed Western media reports that said Moscow was preparing a provocation in eastern Ukraine as based on “unfounded” information,TASS news agency reported.
As a result of the cyberattack,the websites of the Ukraine’s Cabinet,seven ministries,the Treasury,the National Emergency Service and the state services website,where Ukrainians’ electronic passports and vaccination certificates are stored,were temporarily unavailable on Friday.
The websites contained a message in Ukrainian,Russian and Polish,saying that Ukrainians’ personal data has been leaked into the public domain. “Be afraid and expect the worst. This is for your past,present and future,” the message read,in part.
The building of Ukrainian Foreign Ministry in Kyiv.Credit:
Ukraine’s State Service of Special Communication and Information Protection said that no personal data has been leaked. The country’s minister for digital transformation,Mykhailo Fedorov,said later on Friday that “a large part” of the affected websites have been restored.
Victor Zhora,deputy chair of the State Service of Special Communication,said no critical infrastructure was affected. Zhora told a news conference on Friday that about 70 websites of both national and regional government bodies have been affected by the attack.
Tensions between Ukraine and Russia have been running high in recent months after Moscow amassed an estimated 100,000 troops near Ukraine’s border,stoking fears of an invasion. Moscow says it has no plans to attack and rejects Washington’s demand to pull back its forces,saying it has the right to deploy them wherever necessary.
The Kremlin has demanded security guarantees from the West that NATO deny membership to Ukraine and other former Soviet countries and roll back the alliance’s military deployments in Central and Eastern Europe. Washington and its allies have refused to provide such pledges,but said they are ready for the talks.
The US government has held talks with several international energy companies on contingency plans for supplying natural gas to Europe if conflict between Russia and Ukraine disrupts Russian supplies,two US officials and two industry sources told Reuters.
Russia said it dismantled ransomware crime group REvil at the request of the United States in an operation in which it detained and charged the group’s members,the FSB domestic intelligence service said on Friday.
The arrests were a rare apparent demonstration of US-Russian collaboration at a time of high tensions between the two over Ukraine.
The United States welcomed the arrests,according to a senior admininstration official,adding “we understand that one of the individuals who was arrested today was responsible for attack against Colonial Pipeline last spring.”
High-stakes talks this week between Moscow and the US,followed by a meeting of Russia and NATO representatives and a meeting at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe,failed to bring about any immediate progress.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday that the 30-country military organisation will continue to provide “strong political and practical support” to Ukraine in light of the cyber attacks.
“In the coming days,NATO and Ukraine will sign an agreement on enhanced cyber cooperation,including Ukrainian access to NATO’s malware information sharing platform,” Stoltenberg said in a statement.
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European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Friday that the 27-nation bloc is ready to mobilise all its resources to provide technical assistance to Ukraine and help it improve its capacity to weather cyberattacks.
Russia has long history of launching aggressive cyber operations against Ukraine,including a hack of its voting system ahead of 2014 national elections and an assault the country’s power grid in 2015 and 2016. In 2017,Russia unleashed one of most damaging cyberattacks on record with the NotPetya virus that targeted Ukrainian businesses and caused more than $10 billion in damage globally.
Zhora has told the AP that officials are particularly concerned about Russian attacks on the power grid,rail network and central bank.