By outdoor-nature-child.com On October 7, Russian President Vladimir Putin marked his 72nd birthday during a period of considerable unrest. As he approaches 25 years in power, he received a notable birthday message from Alexander Dugin, a prominent nationalist theorist, who declared, “God save the Tsar.” However, the day was marred for Putin by a historic cyberattack on the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK), which rendered nearly a hundred of its websites inoperable. Sources suggest that Ukrainian hackers orchestrated this attack as a sort of twisted birthday tribute.
Voice of America reported that VGTRK, responsible for the country’s main state television channels, faced significant disruptions, with its Rossiya-24 news channel becoming inaccessible. A Ukrainian government insider confirmed that the operation originated in Kyiv.
When Reuters journalists attempted to access the VGTRK website, they were met with a “503 Service Unavailable” error, indicating an inability to handle requests due to server downtime.
The Kremlin has acknowledged the incident, stating, “The website of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company has experienced unprecedented hacker attacks.” This channel plays a crucial role in delivering news about the ongoing war in Ukraine and oversees numerous local TV and radio stations.
A Ukrainian government source revealed to Reuters, “Ukrainian hackers executed a large-scale attack on VGTRK to ‘congratulate’ Putin on his 72nd birthday.”
According to the Russian state news outlet Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the attack targeted both online and internal services of VGTRK, leading to outages in online streaming and internal operations, with a lengthy recovery anticipated. An anonymous insider described the incident as “unprecedented.”
The spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry refrained from naming specific perpetrators but suggested that Russian media has long been a target of the “collective West,” portraying the incident as part of a “hybrid war.”
Independent journalist Alexander Plyushchev reported, “From 5 a.m., the entire news complex of Rossiya-1 failed. Central controls and all servers are down.”
Dugin was among the first to publicly wish Putin a happy birthday, stating, “God save the Tsar.” A longstanding advocate for the unification of Russian-speaking territories and a vision of a vast neo-Russian empire, Dugin has defended Putin’s confrontational approach toward the West and the military actions in Ukraine.
Amidst the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, key figures supporting the war have been targeted, including Dugin’s daughter, Darya Dugina, who was killed in a car bombing in 2022.
Meanwhile, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who prides himself on being Putin’s “infantryman,” took to Telegram to convey his birthday wishes, stating, “Today is our country leader’s birthday; this is a significant day for the entire motherland.”