Vladimir Putin was gifted an unwelcome birthday present today by Ukrainian hackers who took down Russia's state media company - leaving websites and live TV feeds blacked out for hours.
VGTRK, which owns and operates the country's main national TV stations, was subjected to an attack from "the collective West", according to Putin's henchmen.
The VGTRK website was not loading early on Monday, while its Rossiya-24 rolling 24-hour news channel was unavailable online.
"503 Service Unavailable. No server is available to handle this request," read an error message on the site.
A Ukrainian government source said their country's hackers were behind the incident
REUTERS
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the broadcaster was hard at work trying to resolve the issues earlier today.
"Our state media holding, one of the largest, has faced an unprecedented hacker attack on its digital infrastructure," he said.
Peskov continued: "Specialists are working to find out all the circumstances, to understand where the traces left behind by those who organised this hacker attack on the critical infrastructure object lead."
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian government source said their country's hackers were behind the incident - and even took a swipe at the newly-72-year-old Putin to boot.
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Ukrainian hackers "congratulated" Putin on his birthday, a source from the country said
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"Ukrainian hackers 'congratulated' Putin on his birthday by carrying out a large-scale attack on the all-Russian state television and radio broadcasting company," the source said.
One insider detailed the scale of the calamity to Russian outlet Gazeta.ru, which managed to escape the cyberattack.
"Online broadcasting and internal services are down and even the Internet and telephony are not working. It's going to take a long time to fix," the outlet quoted the source as saying.
"I heard they [the hackers] wiped everything from the servers, including backups. They've been working in lockdown since six in the morning!"
Oil fire burns in Feodosia
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Speaking in Moscow, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova refused to give the Ukrainians credit for the attack - but told reporters that Russian media had long since become targets for what she called "the collective West" and said what had happened was part of "a hybrid war".
The other half of that hybrid war came in the early hours of Putin's big day, when the Ukrainian military set an oil depot in occupied Crimea ablaze.
The Baza Telegram news channel, which has sources among Russia's security services, reported that several fuel tanks were on fire in the Crimean city of Feodosia after residents heard a series of loud explosions.
But the Russian defence ministry hit back, claiming that its air defence units destroyed 12 Ukrainian drones.
