Emergency alert apps in Russia and Ukraine hit by cyberattacks, with fake nuclear warnings sent across Ukraine
Ukraine’s air raid alert app sent false warnings of nuclear and chemical threats on Sunday evening, and hours later Russia said its own emergency app had suffered a massive cyberattack, in back-to-back incidents that followed the end of the war’s longest localised truce.
Emergency warning systems in both Russia and Ukraine were hit by cyberattacks within hours of each other, with Ukrainians receiving false alerts about nuclear and chemical threats and Russia reporting that false information had been spread through its own emergency app. The incidents, reported on Sunday evening and early on Monday, struck at the very systems civilians rely on for warnings of incoming drone and missile attacks.
The first incident came in Ukraine on Sunday evening local time, when users of the country’s Air Alert application received fabricated warnings of nuclear and chemical threats in and around Kyiv, along with warnings of potential street combat. One erroneous message falsely claimed that Russia’s hypersonic Oreshnik missile had been deployed. Ukraine’s Air Force said on Telegram that the application appeared to have been subjected to hostile interference, telling residents: “There is no radiation threat! Stay calm and follow our updates on our channel.”
Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ignat later confirmed to the AFP news agency that the application had been hacked. Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communications, known as SPRAVDI, blamed Russia for the incident in a post on X. The Air Alert app is used across Ukraine to warn people in real time of incoming Russian air attacks, and officials were quick to stress that the fake warnings should not be treated as genuine alerts.
Ukrainian authorities also moved to reassure the public that the wider warning system was still working. The country’s Ministry for Digital Transformation said the nationwide alert system was operating normally, with threat signals continuing to be transmitted to regional administrations and street alert systems, while Kyiv city authorities said a separate application dedicated to alerts in the capital was functioning as usual. The distinction mattered: in a country where air raid alerts can sound several times a day, confusion about which warnings to trust can itself become dangerous.
Hours later, early on Monday morning, Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said its own mobile application had been subjected to a “massive cyberattack” that enabled attackers to send false information to the public. The ministry said in a Telegram post that its teams were working to fix the breach and restore the application, which is designed to warn users about incoming drone attacks and other emergencies. Unlike Ukraine, Moscow did not say who it believed was behind the attack.
The back-to-back incidents came immediately after the end of the war’s longest localised truce. A temporary ceasefire in the Russian-occupied Kherson region, focused on the city of Oleshky, ran from 27 October to 1 November and allowed a humanitarian mission into an area where civilians had been trapped with dwindling food supplies. The pause, brokered by United States First Lady Melania Trump, ended on Sunday after Russia refused an offer of extension, according to Kyiv. Ukraine’s Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, confirmed that the ceasefire had ended, calling it an important step in joint humanitarian efforts with Russia.
Kherson’s regional governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, had warned local people to be particularly vigilant as the truce expired and to respond immediately to warnings about Russian attacks. That warning now carries extra weight: if residents cannot be sure whether an alert on their phone is real, they may hesitate in the moments when speed matters most, or ignore a genuine warning altogether. The episode has raised fresh questions about how resilient public warning systems are when they become targets in their own right, rather than simply channels for information about the fighting.
The cyberattacks unfolded against a backdrop of continued strikes elsewhere on Sunday. Russia said a drone had struck an industrial enterprise east of Moscow overnight, with Ukrainian media reporting that Kyiv had attacked the Kstovo oil refinery, while Ukraine’s energy ministry reported fresh power outages across the country, including in Kyiv, following Russian strikes on energy infrastructure. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that his country would stop hitting Russian oil refineries, as United States President Donald Trump has demanded, if Washington provided Kyiv with powerful Patriot interceptor missiles, an offer that underlines how the refinery campaign has become a point of tension between Kyiv and Washington.
The wider war, now in its fifth year since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, has destroyed parts of eastern and southern Ukraine, left hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians dead and forced millions of people to flee their homes, according to AFP. United States-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine are set to resume this month, having been effectively frozen since the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran in February, but there was no immediate sign on Monday that the cyber incidents would feature in that diplomacy.
What happens next is uncertain. Neither side has produced public evidence identifying those behind the two attacks, and Ukraine’s attribution to Russia has not been independently confirmed, while Russia has named no suspect at all. Restoring full confidence in the warning apps will depend on the technical fixes now under way and on whether further false alerts appear in the coming days. For civilians on both sides, the immediate lesson is the one Ukraine’s Air Force gave on Sunday night: treat unexpected alerts with caution, check official channels, and do not assume that every message on a phone screen is a genuine warning.
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