Russian Victory Day Parade Telecast Intruded

Russian Victory Day parade telecasted on television was interrupted and anti-war messages were displayed which in turn watched by millions of Russians

The hack affected several major networks, including Channel One, Rossiya-1, and NTV-Plus. The name of every program was replaced with a message stating, per the BBC’s translation: “On your hands is the blood of thousands of Ukrainians and their hundreds of murdered children. TV and the authorities are lying. No to war.”

“Tonight, TV viewers saw provocative anti-war messages instead of the program guide and channel descriptions on their TVs,” a tweet from Gazeta.ru read. “MTS, Rostelecom, and NTV-Plus, as well as the Yandex TV program, was attacked by hackers.”

Russia’s Victory Day celebrations, a national holiday and military parade watched by President Vladimir Putin and televised in Russia. The annual event celebrates the Soviet Union’s victory, alongside Allied forces, over Nazi Germany in 1945.

There existed speculation that Putin would use the Victory Day celebrations to propagandize or bolster his position around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But his speech concluded without the expected declaration of mass mobilization or war against Ukraine.

It is unclear who was behind the hack, but the hacker group Anonymous retweeted Scarr’s tweet with the message “Good morning, Moscow” within hours of the hack.