Vast swaths of Vladimir Putin’s empire were cut off from the internet today in a mysterious outage amid suspicions of sabotage linked to Ukraine.
Unprecedented web problems have taken large regions across Siberia, the Russian Far East and 11 of Putin’s regions into avalanche.
The areas affected by the problems were 36 times the size of the United Kingdom and almost the size of the United States.
The shutdown followed Russian complaints that Ukraine and the West had targeted its satellites.
There were also suspicions that several fires, explosions and accidents at key strategic facilities may have been caused by acts of sabotage linked to enemies of Putin’s war against Ukraine.
Web problems have affected vast regions across Siberia and the Russian Far East
Earlier, internet provider TransTeleCom (TTK) told its subscribers in Yakutia – Russia’s largest region – that it had suffered a ‘failure in the primary fiber optic link’.
One report said: “There is a global failure of TTK.
“There is no Internet in half of the Far Eastern Federal District.
“There have been outages for about two hours.”
Among the affected regions are Perm, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Primorsky, Krasnoyarsk, Trans-Baikal, Buryatia, Yakutia, Amur, Primorsky and Sakhalin Jewish Autonomous Okrugs.
The main city of St. Petersburg was also said to have had problems with the internet.
Many of the affected areas today are connected by Russian Railways, which is the main shareholder of TTK.
The Internet provider distributes its network services through the Trans-Siberian Railway and branch lines.
The incident comes amid suspicions of war-related sabotage in Ukraine
TransTeleCom (TTK) has told its subscribers in Yakutia – the largest region in Russia – that it has experienced a ‘failure in its primary fiber optic link’.
After the outage, customers expressed their anger on social media over the lack of information around the internet.
“Nothing is working,” said one, while another added, “I am switching to a different user.”
The outage also comes as Moscow threatened to disable the West’s civilian space satellites this week in a dramatic escalation of its war in Ukraine.
The Russian Foreign Ministry accused unnamed countries of helping Kiev target Russian satellites.
“This is a flagrant violation of international law,” the ministry said. “The Russian side has the right to respond appropriately.”
Then she warned: “All the possibilities for this are available.”
Ukraine has been accused of hacking or disrupting Russian civilian communications satellites with the help of “specialists from a number of foreign countries”.
The ministry did not provide specific examples.
The incident comes amid Russian complaints that Ukraine and the West have targeted its satellites
Russia has already accused the West of using its civilian space infrastructure to support the operations of Ukrainian forces, including combat strikes, and to detect the locations and movements of Vladimir Putin’s military.
Recent weeks have also witnessed the interruption of Russian radio and television broadcasts with warnings of apparent nuclear warnings.
At the time, people were urged to hasten to their nearest shelters amid the sound of sirens on radio and television broadcasts.
Two weeks ago, residents of Crimea were warned of imminent emergency evacuation ferries to the Russian mainland after a massive drone attack by Ukraine on the seaport of Sevastopol.
The effect is seen as causing psychological trauma among the population and leading to questioning of Putin’s war against Ukraine.
In such cases, Russian officials have blamed hacking by unidentified collections of satellite signals.
Russia is seeking to speed up the launch of its military satellites amid the war in Ukraine.
