Emergency air-raid warning systems in Ukraine were hit by cyber-attacks late on Sunday night, after an official alert application began sending out false and alarming messages to users. Officials in both Ukraine and Russia have said their systems were compromised, and the messages were quickly identified as fake.
The false alerts included warnings of a radiation threat declared in Kyiv, a nuclear alert across Ukraine, a chemical attack on the capital and street fighting taking place in Kyiv. Residents were told not to go outside. The messages were timed between 22:47 and 22:49 on Sunday night. One of them, which was written in Russia, claimed that a nuclear alert was in place across Ukraine and reassured readers that it was the Oreshnik missile flying, a message designed to appear calm while spreading fear.
The sequence of messages arrived in quick succession over about two minutes, giving residents little time to judge whether they were genuine. The messages were sent through the same channel used for real emergency warnings, which is why the incident caused concern among people who may have believed they were authentic. Authorities have not said how many people received the alerts, and no figures on the number of affected devices have been published.
All-clear messages were sent out at 23:53, roughly an hour after the first false alert, bringing the episode to an end. The delay between the false messages and the all-clear meant that some residents may have remained indoors or in shelter for a considerable time without knowing whether the threat was real.
The incident comes as Ukraine has been subject to repeated air attacks, and reliable warnings are a key part of civil protection for residents of cities such as Kyiv. When official alert channels are disrupted, people can be left uncertain about whether to shelter, move or stay where they are, which makes the integrity of such systems a matter of public safety rather than a technical concern alone.
Both Ukrainian and Russian officials have described their respective systems as hit by hacking, a point that the source material presents as a shared claim rather than an independently verified finding. Further details about who was responsible for the attacks, and what steps are being taken to secure the systems, had not been confirmed at the time of reporting.
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