False alerts push panic messages to phones
Ukraine's air raid alert application appears to have been compromised on Sunday, and for a brief period it told users that the capital faced a radiation hazard, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. The service said the app had likely been subjected to hostile interference and stressed that no radiation threat existed, asking the public to remain calm and to rely on its channel for updates.[S1][S2][S3][S4][S5]
The warnings began arriving at roughly 22:47 local time, 20:47 GMT, with red-level air raid notices apparently issued across the country. In Kyiv the first message declared a radiation threat in the capital. A minute later a message written in Russian told recipients a nuclear alert would cover Ukraine and mentioned Oreshnik, a reference to a Russian ballistic missile.[S1][S6]
Further alerts followed within two minutes. One announced a chemical attack threat in Kyiv and instructed people to stay indoors. Another warned of street fighting in the capital and again told residents not to go outside. Shortly before midnight, a series of all-clear messages arrived, each tied to one of the earlier Kyiv warnings and cancelling it individually.[S1][S6][S8]
Officials scramble to correct the record
The Ukrainian Central Intelligence Agency described the episode as a failure in the application and advised the public to confirm the situation through other information channels. In a separate statement it said the radiation hazard signal had been played over loudspeaker devices in the Lviv region, and it repeated that no radiation danger existed.[S1]
Regional leaders also moved to calm residents. Svitlana Onyshchuk, governor of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, said the region was calm for the time being after the app had shown a red-level alert there between 22:50 and 23:57. Natalya Zabolotna, the Vinnytsia regional head, described a cyber-attack on the app and warned people not to click a link in the message, which she said could be a phishing attempt.[S1]
The Ministry of Digital Transformation, which supports the app, said it had been temporarily switched off for maintenance after apparently being compromised. It encouraged residents to activate emergency notifications on their smartphones so state-issued distress signals could still reach them. The Centre for Countering Disinformation advised turning on phone notifications, listening for sirens and reading only official sources.[S1]
Russia reports its own app hit hours later
Several hours after the bogus warnings appeared in Ukraine, Russia's emergencies ministry announced that its own app had been hit by a large-scale cyberattack that fed false material to users. Neither the ministry nor Russian state media offered additional information. The Ukrainian news outlet UNN said the intrusion pushed out invented warnings about nuclear threats within Russia.[S1]
Atesh, a partisan Ukrainian group active in Russian-held territory, said on Telegram that the app had been hacked, posting laughing emojis alongside the claim. It published a screenshot, not verified by the BBC, of an apparent emergency alert that urged users to stock provisions urgently for three weeks and shelter in basements, and which contained obscene language.[S1]
The alerts landed minutes before a localized ceasefire in Ukraine's front-line Kherson region was due to expire. That truce, arranged to let civilians leave the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky, had begun the previous Tuesday and officially ended at 23:00 on Sunday, while fighting carried on elsewhere. Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.[S1]
