Opinion | The U.S.-Russia conflict is heating up — in cyberspace
Andrei Krutskikh, the top cyber expert at the Russian foreign ministry, charged in an interview on Monday with the Russian newspaper Kommersant that the United States had allegedly “unleashed cyber aggression against Russia and its allies.” He claimed that Washington was using Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and “the IT Army created by him to carry out computer attacks against our country as a battering ram.”
Krutskikh continued ominously: “We do not recommend that the United States provoke Russia into retaliatory measures. A rebuff will certainly follow. It will be firm and resolute. However, the outcome of this ‘mess’ could be catastrophic, because there will be no winners in a direct cyber clash of states.”
To back up Krutskikh’s claim that the United States has attacked Russian cyber targets, Kommersant cited a June 1 comment by Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, head of U.S. Cyber Command. Speaking about Ukraine during a visit to Estonia, Nakasone told Sky News: “We’ve conducted a series of operations across the full spectrum: offensive, defensive, [and] information operations.”
A Cyber Command spokesman had no comment. A senior State Department official said Krutskikh’s allegations were “nothing new” and a “rehash” of past statements.
The Biden administration, for its part, accused Russia last month of conducting “malicious cyber activity” against Ukraine, including an attack on a commercial…