Sputnik International, Sputnik Czech Republic and Sputnik Poland websites have been facing mass DDos attacks amid Western sanctions against Russia in response to Moscow's special operation in Ukraine.
"The websites Sputnik International and Sputnik Czech Republic have been under mass DDos attacks," the press service for Sputnik said.
According to Sputnik Czech Republic, their website was down for about an hour due to a DDos attack.
A denial-of-service attack is a cyber-attack when a perpetrator seeks to make a network resource unavailable to users.
Earlier in the day, the Czech authorities said they have launched an information campaign against Russia on the Internet. They threatened to block the Sputnik Czech Republic website, while the Czech Internet Development Association criticised the move as non-transparent. In addition to the blocking of eight "pro-Russian sites,” the National Cyber Operations Centre (NCKO) also asked to block more sites including cz.sputniknews.com. This is according to the information that the peer-to-peer node NIX.cz sent out to providers on Saturday, the online publication Lupa said.
A wave of DDos attacks comes days after Russia began a special operation to demilitarise and "denazify" Ukraine, responding to calls from the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics for help in countering the aggression of Ukrainian forces. The Russian Defence Ministry said the special operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only and the civilian population is not in danger. Moscow says it has no plans to occupy Ukraine.