- A cyberattack on Russian airline Aeroflot led to significant flight cancellations and delays.
- The attack was claimed by Ukrainian group Silent Crow and Belarusian group Cyber-Partisans.
- President Donald Trump announced that he was shortening his deadline for Russia to sign a peace deal with Ukraine.
On Monday, a cyberattack on Russia’s state-owned airline Aeroflot led to a major outage for the company’s computer system, causing dozens of flight cancellations.
Responsibility for the cyberattack was claimed by a Ukrainian hacker group called Silent Crow along with a Belarusian hacker activist group known as the Cyber-Partisans, per The Associated Press.
Also on Monday, President Donald Trump shortened his deadline for Russia to sign a peace deal with Ukraine.
The impact of the cyberattack
The AP reported that over 100 flights were canceled due to the cyberattack, and more were delayed. Aeroflot’s subsidiaries, Rossiya and Pobeda, also experienced flight disruptions.
A majority of the impacted flights were domestic, but there were also cancellations for international flights to Belarus, Armenia and Uzbekistan.
The airline did not say how long it would take for the problems to be resolved, but did say that the problem stemmed from issues with its information system.
According to NBC, the Kremlin called the situation “worrying” and prosecutors confirmed that Aeroflot’s issues were the result of a hack, opening up a criminal investigation.
Anton Gorelkin, a senior lawmaker, said that Russia was under digital attack.
“We must not forget that the war against our country is being waged on all fronts, including the digital one. And I do not rule out that the ‘hacktivists’ who claimed responsibility for the incident are in the service of unfriendly states,” Gorelkin said in a statement, per NBC.
A spokesperson for the Kremlin said “the hacker threat is a threat that remains for all large companies providing services to the general public,” per the AP.
What group committed the cyberattack?
A statement claiming to be from the hacking group Silent Crow claimed responsibility for the operation together with the Cyber-Partisans. The groups also linked the attack to the war in Ukraine, according to BBC.
“Glory to Ukraine! Long live Belarus!” said the statement, per BBC.
Following the attack, the Cyber-Partisans’ website said: “We are helping Ukrainians in their fight with the occupier, carrying out a cyber strike on Aeroflot and paralysing the largest airline in Russia.”
The statement from the Silent Crow claimed that the cyberattack was the result of a yearlong operation to penetrate Aeroflot’s network. The group also claimed that it destroyed 7,000 servers, copied customer and internal data, and gained control over employees’ computers.
The group also threatened to start releasing “the personal data of all Russians who have ever flown Aeroflot,” per NBC.
According to the AP, Belarus is a close ally of Russia and is ruled by President Alexander Lukashenko.
Lukashenko “allowed Russia to use his country’s territory to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, and to deploy some of Moscow’s tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus,” per the AP.
Trump’s deadline for Putin
On July 14, Trump gave a 50-day deadline for Russian President Vladimir Putin to reach a peace deal with Ukraine or face massive “secondary tariffs” against Moscow’s trade partners, per Fox News. That deadline was set to expire in early September.
While in Scotland with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday, Trump said he will shorten that original deadline to 10-12 days from Monday.
“I’m going to make a new deadline, of about 10, 10 or 12 days from today,” Trump told reporters, per Fox News. “There’s no reason for waiting. It was 50 days. I wanted to be generous, but we just don’t see any progress being made.”
The president said he will likely make a formal announcement of the deadline revision “tonight or tomorrow,” per CNBC. He added that the U.S. would impose sanctions in addition to the secondary tariffs if the deadline is not met.
“I’m disappointed in President Putin,” Trump said. “Russia and Ukraine — I would have said five times we had a deal.”
“I spoke to President Putin a lot. Got along with him very well,” he continued, per CNBC. “Then President Putin launches rockets into a city like Kyiv and kills a lot of people — in a nursing home, or wherever — and there are bodies lying all over the streets.”
Trump said that he didn’t see any reason to wait because he thinks he already knows what the answer from Putin will be, per Fox News.
These comments from Trump came hours after Russia launched over 300 drones and missiles across Ukraine, according to Fox News. This caused Ukraine to scramble its air force, and also prompted Poland’s Operational Command to deploy fighter jets into the air.