Ukraine and Russia say their emergency alert apps have been hit by cyber-attacks – what we know in 100 words
In Ukraine, residents saw warnings including one for a “chemical threat” and another for “street fights”
Olena, who lives in Kyiv, tells BBC Radio 4’s Today programme her “first thought” after seeing the alerts was: “I’m prepared for blackouts, for a cut in central heating and water supply, but not for a nuclear attack”
The air force went on to clarify there was no imminent threat of nuclear war, blaming Russian interference, writes our correspondent in Kyiv
Later, Russia itself said a “massive cyber-attack” had affected its app, with the emergencies ministry saying specialists were working to restore it
If this is confirmed as a tit-for-tat scenario, it implies whoever struck second had the power to carry out the hack but chose to hold off until its own system was hit, writes our cyber correspondent
Meanwhile, strikes were reported overnight in both countries, with four people injured in the Ukrainian city of Odesa and Russia saying drone strikes hit an industrial complex east of Moscow
A woman in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, Sophiia, says the first thing she saw was the word “nuclear” when the false alerts came through last night, which made her “pretty nervous and scared”.
“My first thought was that something nuclear was actually flying toward us,” she says, recalling how the app “suddenly started screaming at me in the middle of the night”.
The main reason she has the app is to know when there’s an air raid alert at her child’s school, she says. “Our school doesn’t have a shelter, so whenever there’s an alert, I have to go and pick her up.”
She says she didn’t spot the Russian text, skipping “right past that”. But when the notification mentioned street fighting in Kyiv, she became suspicious.
“I thought, wait, no, that’s impossible… we don’t start fighting each other in the streets when ballistic missiles are flying over our heads,” she says.
