In the latest weakening of Putin’s war propaganda blitz, Anonymous hacked into Russia’s media censorship bureau and leaked 340,000 data files.
The hacktivists gained access to the Roskomnadzor federal agency in order to acquire confidential documents, which they subsequently passed on to the transparency organization Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), which published them online.
The cache of 820 megabytes of emails and attachments, some dated as recently as March 5, demonstrate how the Kremlin is banning any mention of their violent invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow is now calling a ‘special military operation.’
According to DDoSecrets, the Anonymous hacker stated that they ‘urgently thought the Russian people should have access to information concerning their government.’
The files concern the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, which has a population of four million people and is one of the largest in the federation.
The Russian media regulator, Roskomnadzor, restricted access to Facebook and Twitter before shutting them and threatened to block access to Wikipedia because of its article on the invasion.
On February 24, the agency issued an edict requiring all media outlets to solely use official, state-approved information sources or risk severe repercussions for propagating ‘fake news.’
When discussing Russia’s military actions in Ukraine, the phrases “war,” “invasion,” and “assault” were all banned.
