Kyiv welcomes UK's introducing cyber sanctions against Russia
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine welcomes the decision of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to introduce sanctions against three units of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and 18 military intelligence officers for many years of malicious cyber activity directed against the United Kingdom, the European Union, NATO, and Ukraine.
"Sanctioning Russian hacker groups is a strong and timely step in response to the Russian Federation’s ongoing cyber campaign aimed at destabilizing European democratic institutions, energy infrastructure, telecommunications companies, electoral processes, and media — all with the goal of undermining European stability and security. This is also a significant and tangible contribution to Ukraine’s ongoing fight against Russian aggression," reads the report.
"The sanctioned entities — identified through Ukraine’s national attribution process as groups UAC-0056, UAC-0001, and UAC-0002, affiliated with Russian military units No. 29155, No. 26165, and No. 74455 — are actively engaged in cyberattacks, cyber espionage, cyberterrorism, and other forms of hostile operations in cyberspace, primarily directed against Ukraine," it says.
"Since the beginning of 2022, Ukraine’s national cyber incident response team CERT-UA has documented over 100 cyber incidents linked to UAC-0056, more than 110 associated with UAC-0001, and over 170 attributed to UAC-0002. The latter is responsible for some of the most notorious attacks, including those on JSC Ukrzaliznytsia, Ukraine’s state registries, and the telecommunications provider Kyivstar," it says.
"Ukraine strongly condemns the Russian Federation’s malicious hybrid operations in cyberspace as a systemic threat to international security and democratic governance. We remain firmly committed — together with the United Kingdom, the European Union, and NATO — to stepping up joint efforts to counter Russian threats in the fifth domain and to advancing the development of a secure and resilient global cyberspace," according to the document.
