A cyberattack by Ukraine's military intelligence agency has continued to cause disruptions across banking and telecommunications in Russia for a third day, an agency source told the Kyiv Independent on July 25.
Russian media reported on July 24 that several top banks, including Raiffeisen, Gazprombank, VTB, and Alfabank, were experiencing outages. Social networks, payment systems on public transport, and some airlines were also reportedly impacted.
VTB's press service told Russian state-owned news agency TASS on June 24 that the Russian banking sector had been hit by a "DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack planned from abroad."
According to the Kyiv Independent's source in Ukraine's military intelligence agency, the attack began on the morning of July 23.
"The online services of financial institutions across the country are either not working at all or are working unstable and with errors for the third day," the source said.
The source added that as of July 25, the attack has impacted other websites, including the Russian social network VK, and other payment systems like Russia's National Card Payment System, which operates Russia's Mir payment system.
The Mir payment system was instituted following Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 after international sanctions began to limit the usage of international cards.
Its usage increased after the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the subsequent withdrawal of the major payment card services Visa and Mastercard from Russia.
"The situation is complicated by the unstable work of internet providers," which are also under attack by Ukrainian cyber experts," the source said.
An attack against Russian banks and Russia's Mir payment system in June by Ukraine's IT Army, a volunteer cyberwarfare group, rendered a range of Russian bank services non-functional.
The Kyiv Independent news desk
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