Website of Poltava's PTV UA hacked, posts video calling for a coup

The website of the Politava-based channel PTV UA was hacked on March 15. Hackers posted a video calling for the overthrow of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, reports PTV UA editor Leonid Avramenko to Nadiya Kucher, the Institute of Mass Information representative in Poltava.

The website has since been partially restored. Leonid Avramenko says that IT specialists are working to restore some of the previously published content.

Screenshot from the website PTV UA

“Instead of the website's materials there was a video of a woman talking about a coup, generated with a neural network,” says Avramenko. The editor said that over the weekend they noticed that all articles on the website had the headline “Urgent address by PTV UA.”

“The articles contained a link to someone else’s video. We realized that the website had been hacked. We promptly contacted the IT specialists maintaining our website. Now they are working on improving our website's security,” said Leonid Avramenko.

He added that the editorial team suspects Russian involvement in the attack, because the video led to harmful statements about Ukraine's statehood.

As IMI reported, in February, the Belaruski Gayun Telegram chatbot used to collect information from people, was hacked.