US charges five Russian intelligence officials over cyberattacks against Ukraine

US Justice Dept reveals Russian military cyber unit began large-scale operations in 2020

WASHINGTON:

The US on Thursday charged five Russian intelligence officials and a Russian civilian with conspiring to launch cyberattacks against Ukraine and its allies in a bid to hobble Ukraine.

In a revised indictment unsealed on Thursday, the Justice Department said a cyber unit of Russia's military intelligence agency conducted "large-scale cyber operations" starting as far back as 2020, before Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The original indictment, filed in June in the US District Court for the District of Maryland, only named a single defendant: Amin Stigal.

It accused him of conspiring with Russia's military intelligence agency, known as the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, or GRU, to launch cyber attacks against computer systems in Ukraine and other countries, including a computer network maintained by an unnamed US agency in Maryland.

Thursday's news comes just one day after the US took several legal actions against Russia to combat alleged efforts to meddle in the 2024 presidential elections, including charging two employees of the Russian state media network RT and sanctioning RT and its top network editor.

It also came on the same day that the Justice Department announced it had secured two indictments against Russian TV contributor Dimitri Simes and his wife over sanctions violations and money laundering.

Earlier on Thursday, intelligence agencies in the U.S. and the United Kingdom warned that a cyber espionage group located within Russia's GRU known as "Unit 29155" was destructively targeting critical national infrastructure.

Unit 29155, which is the group at the heart of Thursday's indictment, is a covert part of the GRU which carries out subversion, sabotage and assassination missions outside Russia, Western officials told Reuters.