Russia’s cyberattack on Ukraine: a desperate attempt to spread panic and erode trust

Conflicting alerts on Sunday

Millions of Ukrainians received a phone warning on Sunday night, prompting fears of danger. A follow-up message on Telegram said the Air Alarm application had probably been subjected to hostile interference and that there was no radiation threat.

Cyberattacks during the war

Brigadier general Volodymyr Karasteliov described a large-scale DDoS attack against a nationwide Ukrainian television channel. It lasted three hours and targeted the website’s application layer, using requests that imitated real users to overload the server and make it unavailable.

Uneven numbers, broader effects

Cybersecurity firm CybelAngel said attacks between Russia and Ukraine are largely asymmetric. Its REACT team recorded 1,651 cyber incidents targeting Ukrainian entities and 575 targeting Russian entities between January 2025 and January 2026.

Experts told The Independent that the purpose of such attacks extends beyond disrupting communications. One expert said striking air-raid systems targets a point where people place trust in their government, and warned that attacks can erode confidence in official platforms.

Trust in official warnings

An expert said Russia’s description of the Ukrainian alert system as a communication platform, rather than an air-raid system, did not change what mattered: people look to leaders to understand events. The concern, the expert said, is whether people can trust messages that appear to come from official sources. Oleksandr Merezhko, chair of Ukraine’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee and a member of Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, told the BBC that Ukraine and its people were prepared for all scenarios.