Europe | Digital daggers drawn
Russia and the West will be cautious in wielding cyber power against one another
Russian missiles slammed into Kyiv on the morning of February 24th. But its computer networks were already long under attack. On February 23rd, as the country was still bracing for an invasion that was expected to be imminent, the websites of Ukraine’s parliament and several government agencies were put out of action. A similar digital assault on Ukrainian government websites and banks on February 15th and 16th was quickly attributed by America, Britain and other governments to the gru, Russia’s military-intelligence agency. Last month the websites of several government ministries were defaced with the message, “Be afraid and expect the worst.”
