Russian state TV ‘hit by cyber attack’ during Putin’s speech

Russian state TV stations have reportedly been hit by a cyber attack as Vladimir Putin delivered a keynote speech on the Ukraine war.

State media websites broadcasting the State of the Nation address suffered an outage on Tuesday morning.

The All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK) website and the Smotrim live-streaming platform went down during periods of the speech.

A message on the VGTRK website said that “technical works were being carried out” while the Smotrim website was not loading.

The state-run RIA Novosti news agency claimed the outage was the result of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, although this claim has not yet been independently verified.

Shortly before the speech started, state TV channels had broadcast a segment on the technical preparations that go into broadcasting the speech, saying the live stream would be carried across all major Russian TV channels.

In a nearly two-hour speech on Tuesday, Mr Putin vowed to continue with the year-long war in Ukraine and accused Nato of fanning the flames of conflict by mistakenly believing Russia would be defeated.

Flanked by four Russian tricolour flags on either side of him, Mr Putin told the country’s political and military elite that Russia would “carefully and consistently resolve the tasks facing us.”

He claimed Russia had done everything it could to avoid war, but that Western-backed Ukraine had been planning to attack Crimea.

The West had let the genie out of the bottle in a host of regions of across the world by sowing chaos and war, Mr Putin said.

“The people of Ukraine themselves have become hostages of the Kyiv regime and its Western masters, who have actually occupied this country in a political, military, and economic sense,” he added. Defeating Russia, he said, was impossible.

He also pledged more help for Russian soldiers, saying that social and medical support would be coordinated.

He said: “Each family of a lost fighter, each veteran, must have a social care coordinator attached to him or her which must communicate with them personally and settle their issues.”