Thanks to hackers, Zelenskyj appeared on Russian television, promising to liberate Crimea

The Russian internet newspaper Gazeta.ru wrote that Zelensky claimed in a speech on his birthday that the Ukrainian armed forces would soon attack the once part of Ukraine.

According to the Moskovskii Komsomolets newspaper, a Belgorod resident commented that at one point Zelensky’s speech was only broadcast in Ukrainian on all available TV channels, and that this crime was committed by the gathering of Ukrainian forces, according to another witness. The regional service of the RBK server reported that there had been an unauthorized change in the television signal from the satellite.

Something similar happened in November, when Russian forces, who invaded Ukraine last November, shot down a radio station, while the Belgorod region was broadcasting Ukrainian radio.

Gazeta.ru, on the contrary, claims that Russian hackers launched a massive cyberattack on Germany in retaliation for Chancellor Olaf Schultz’s decision to supply Leopard tanks to Ukraine. Hackers from at least 17 groups responded to the KillNet group’s call, according to the message.

Russia, which annexed Ukraine’s Crimea in the spring of 2014 in the first international violation, attempted to occupy the Donetsk, Luhansk, Khersonsk and Zaborsk regions last year. Kyiv and the rest of the world do not recognize this annexation.

Last fall, Ukrainian troops managed to liberate a hundred occupied territories, including the city of Kherson, from which Russian troops had to withdraw in November. Kherson was the only regional center that the Russians managed to capture in 11 months, but only for a short time.