Russian state media company VGTRK, which oversees the country’s primary national TV stations, fell victim to a significant cyberattack on Monday, allegedly orchestrated by Ukrainian hackers, Reuters reported.
Early reports indicated that VGTRK’s website was down, and its Rossiya-24 news channel was inaccessible online. An error message stating “503 Service Unavailable. No server is available to handle this request,” appeared when Reuters attempted to access the livestream.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the attack, stating, “Our state media holding, one of the largest, has faced an unprecedented hacker attack on its digital infrastructure.” He added that specialists are investigating the incident to trace the origins of the attack.
VGTRK, which serves as a key source of news for many Russians, acknowledged earlier in the day that its online services had been compromised overnight. However, the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
A Ukrainian government source claimed that the timing of the attack was intentional, coinciding with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 72nd birthday. “Ukrainian hackers ‘congratulated’ Putin on his birthday by launching a large-scale attack on the all-Russian state television and radio broadcasting company,” the source said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
While Reuters could not independently verify this claim, Russian news outlet Gazeta.ru reported that the cyberattack affected both the online and internal services of VGTRK, which also operates regional TV channels and radio stations. An unnamed source suggested that online broadcasting and internal operations were severely disrupted, stating, “It’s going to take a long time to fix.”
Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, refrained from attributing blame but noted that Russian media have long been targets of what she termed “the collective West.” She emphasized that the incident would be raised in international forums, including at UNESCO, the U.N. agency advocating for freedom of speech.
