Russian Government Websites Outage blamed on U.S. cyberattack

Russia suspects that the United States carried out massive cyberattacks against government websites on Wednesday.

"Direct threats against the websites of Russian state structures from Washington have been made more than once, including recently, so I cannot rule out such a possibility," Russian Senator Andrei Klimov was quoted as saying by Open Media.

Earlier, The New York Times reported, citing officials in Joe Biden's administration that the U.S. was preparing a cyber attack against Russia.

Russian users began experiencing difficulties accessing the websites of the Kremlin, the Russian government, the State Duma, the Federation Council, a number of ministries and Russian media watchdog, Roskomnadzor. This happened two hours after the Roskomnadzor announced that it was beginning to slow down access to Twitter, accusing the social network of not complying with Russian laws. Twitter is the sixth biggest social media site in Russia and widely used by opposition figures including Alexei Navalny, who was jailed in January on his return to Russia after treatment for a poisoning attack in Siberia.

“Most likely, the attack was sanctioned by the U.S. leadership and could, in particular, be a response to today's decision of the Roskomnadzor to slow down Twitter,” said Klimov. "Every year our country is subjected to about 3-4 billion attacks. The infrastructure vital for the functioning of the country, such as the Central Election Committee’s website, are attacked. All these attacks are repelled, although it is not easy to do it," he explained.