Georgia and Western allies accuse Russian GRU of cyber attack

Some 15,000 Georgian websites were targeted in October 2019. REUTERS / Kacper Pempel

Text by: RFI Follow

Georgia affirms this Thursday February 20 that the cyber attack of which it was victim last October was carried out by the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU.

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The attack was " planned and carried out by the main management of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation ". It is with these words that the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs made public the conclusions of the investigation opened after the large-scale cyber attack that targeted thousands of websites in October 2019.

Around 15,000 Georgian websites, including those of the presidency, the courts and the media, were affected. The targeted sites displayed a photo of ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili, hated by Russian power as well as current Georgian power, accompanied by the inscription in English "I'll be back" ("I will return")

The joke worries Tbilisi, says our correspondent Régis Genté . Not only because the country had already suffered similar attacks during the Russo-Georgian war of summer 2008, but also because other ex-Soviet republics were victims. This is the case of Estonian websites in 2007 or the Ukrainian electricity network in 2015. The cyber attack also shows that the appeasement policy carried out by the current government towards Russia does not protect it from the aggressions of the latter.

Washington and London accuse Russia

" Georgia condemns this cyberattack which goes against international standards and principles ", adds Tbilisi while London and Washington have also accused, in separate press releases, Moscow of being behind the computer attack.

" The GRU's dangerous and shameless cyberattack campaign against Georgia, a sovereign and independent nation, is completely unacceptable, " said British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab in a statement. " The Russian government has a choice : pursue this aggressive attitude towards other countries or become a responsible partner who respects international law ".

The US State Department spoke to him of " widespread cyberattacks " against several thousand websites in Georgia, saying that these operations were aimed " at sowing division, creating insecurity and undermining democratic institutions ". Washington called on Russia to " stop this behavior in Georgia and elsewhere ".

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  • Georgia
  • Cybercriminality
  • Russia
  • Mikheil Saakashvili

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