The Russian video platform Rutube, which sees itself as a competitor to American YouTube, was the target of a massive cyber attack on Tuesday.

"We are indeed faced with the largest cyber attack in Rutube's history," the company said on the Messenger service Telegram.

Restoring access will "take more time than the technicians initially thought," Rutube said.

When the Rutube.ru website was called up on Tuesday morning, a black screen appeared with a white text on it: “The website has been hacked.

The situation is currently under control.

User data is protected.”

According to Rutube, the website has been down since Monday.

On Monday, Russia celebrated the victory over Hitler's Germany 77 years ago with a large military parade.

Dictator Vladimir Putin had pledged his country to the war against Ukraine, known in Kremlin parlance as a military "special operation," under the slogan he has been issuing since the attack began on February 24: It's about "denazification." .

Behind the cyber attack on Rutube are the same hackers who have "repeatedly attacked the websites of public institutions over the past two months," the Russian company said.

Based on photos, Ukrainian media reported on Monday that there had been hacker attacks on the broadcasting systems of the Russian television channels MTS, NTV-Plus, Rostelecom and Winx.

The message was spread: "The blood of thousands of Ukrainians and hundreds of their killed children is on your hands.

The television and the authorities lie.

No to war.”

Two journalists from the news website Lenta.ru, which is considered to be pro-Kremlin, published a long text on Monday morning in which they criticized the Russian attack on Ukraine as "bloody and absurd".

The text was quickly removed from the page.

"We are now looking for work, lawyers and maybe political asylum," said Egor Poliakov and Alexandra Mirochnikova.

"The most important reason was conscience," said Polyakov.

Since independent media can no longer be called up in Russia without alternative Internet access, he and his colleague decided to make their materials accessible to the readers of his medium.

Nothing was initially known about possible legal consequences.

In March, the editor Marina Ovsyannikova, who works for the Pervy Kanal channel, appeared behind the announcer during the main news program.

Ovzyannikova held up a sign criticizing Russia's actions in Ukraine and media "propaganda".