Kremlin and other Russian official websites down; experts doubt US involvement
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This alleged move from the US has come after the officials concluded that Russia was likely involved in the controversial SolarWinds Orion attacks
Days after the US warned of a cyber attack against Russia, the Kremlin website and a few other official websites have stopped working.
In a surprising move, on Wednesday morning, nobody was able to open the websites of Prime Minister, Roskomnadzor and other state departments.
This has come after there were several reports claiming that the US was preparing a retaliation cyber attack against Russia.
A few sources of the White House told the American publication The New York Times that the first move against Vladimir Putin-ruled country is expected in the next three weeks, which will be followed with a 'series of clandestine actions across Russian networks'.
While these actions will not have a massive impact on others and will not be hugely evident to outsiders, sources believe it will send a clear message to Vladimir Putin — who has been receiving criticism over the alleged poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
This alleged move from the US has come after the officials concluded that Russia was likely involved in the controversial SolarWinds Orion attacks that had led to the disruption of several government agencies and private firms' security.
These disruptions of the websites have come a little after the White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed to local media house, CNBC, that the US government will be taking 'a mix of actions seen and unseen' as a rebuttal to the alleged attacks from Russia, but declined to give any further details saying, 'we will not publicly discuss certain aspects of our response.'
The description of websites also happened while Moscow was busy restricting the use of Twitter by slowing down its speed for users in the country over what it said was the social media platform's failure to remove "illegal" content.
"The slowing down will be applied on a 100% of mobile devices and on 50% of non-mobile devices," the regulator said in a statement on its website.
"If (Twitter) continues to ignore the requirements of the law, the enforcement measures will be continued in line with the response regulations (all the way to blocking)," it said.