Russians couldn’t see Putin’s speech after a ‘major hack’ caused a power outage

The broadcast of Vladimir Putin’s speech was blocked across Russia by a “major hack”.

In the web links of state broadcasters, instead of the speech of the Russian president to his parliament, the message “Mistake 500” appeared.

It seemed that the issue reached the state broadcaster – All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK) – in all 11 Russian time zones.

State news agency RIA Novosti said the outage was caused by a distributed denial-of-service attack.

Radio Mayak – also suspended – said its web channels had been attacked by hackers.

Before the speech began, state television broadcast a report on the technical preparations and said the live stream will be broadcast on all major networks.

In his long speech to the country, Putin claimed that he “did not start the war”, referring to a “special military operation”.

He claimed that the Ukrainians were waiting for his troops to “come to the rescue” and that the West had unleashed a “genie in a bottle”.

“They started the war and we used violence to stop it,” he said.

Putin spoke repeatedly about the situation in the Donbass region, where large areas are in the hands of Russian separatist groups as a result of the war.

In his speech, he continued: “Step by step, carefully and consistently, we are solving the challenges ahead.

Since 2014, the [people of the] Donbass had fought to defend his right to live on his own land and speak his native language.

“They fought and did not give up under conditions of blockade and constant shelling, undisguised hatred of the Kiev regime.

“We patiently tried to negotiate a peaceful way out of this extremely difficult conflict, but a very different scenario was being prepared behind our backs.”

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