Right of reply by Representative of the Russian Federation Ms.Irina Tyazhlova at the Seventh session of the UN Open-Ended Working Group on security of and in the use of ICTs 2021-2025
Mr. Chair,
Our delegation is forced to take the floor to respond to unsubstantiated political attacks against Russia from Western delegations.
The attempts of NATO countries to portray Ukraine as the main digital victim are extremely unconvincing. Especially against the background the Kiev’s authorities continue to boast about their sabotage activities with the use of ICTs. The so-called “IT army,” supervised by the “Zelensky regime” together with Western governments, is also increasing its hostile efforts. Our experts record, on a daily basis, computer attacks against the information resources of government agencies and critical information infrastructure facilities of the Russian Federation. Other countries are increasingly suffering from the rampant hacker conglomerate as well. In January 2024, the Bangladesh Election Commission reported attempts originating from Ukraine to disable the electronic voting application for the general parliamentary elections. Cyber fraudsters are still operating from about a thousand call centers located in Ukraine.
It is noteworthy that Kiev acts as aggressor in information space thanks to the support it receives from the West. US Cyber Command units and multinational EU cyber forces are deployed in Ukraine to train and coordinate hackers, collect data on hacking methods and vulnerabilities of Russian systems for subsequent transfer to the Pentagon and the NSA, as well as NATO military structures. At the same time, specific formats are created to assist the “Zelensky regime” to use ICT for military-political purposes. In particular, the Tallinn Mechanism, created in December 2023, is tailored for this task. Western IT-corporations are subdued by their governments to provide material and technical assistance to strengthen the information security of Ukrainian government agencies, circulate reports and papers with unsubstantiated accusations of Russia of “cyber aggression”. Products of these companies, like MOBILedit Forensic by Compelson, which allow unauthorized extraction of protected data from personal communication devices, are used to intercept correspondence of Russian citizens.
Thank you for your attention.
