Kremlin hackers are seeking to “disrupt or destroy” Britain’s critical infrastructure, the government has said – amid a warning Russia is planning to hit the power supply in four Nordic countries. Listen to a Daily podcast special on the Pentagon leaks while you scroll.
Ryanair promises to start flights back to Ukraine within two weeks of war ending
“We will be Ukraine’s biggest airline,” the budget airline’s boss, Michael O’Leary, has pledged at the Bloomberg New Economy Gateway conference near Dublin.
He said he had hired around 60 Ukrainian pilots and around 80 cabin crew and his aim was to fly 30 routes from four Ukrainian airports back into the European Union within weeks of the conflict ending.
The airline would then plan to open up three or four large bases in the country within six to 12 months.
“We would be back in there hopefully within two weeks after someone tells us it’s safe to fly back into Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa.”
He added: “Kherson will be a lot longer because the airport has been destroyed.”
US has ‘sensitive technology’ at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant
Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant contains US-origin technology which Russia is being warned not to interfere with, according to a report.
CNN is reporting the warning came in a letter from the US energy department to Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy company Rosatom last month.
Andrea Ferkile, the head of the department’s office of nonproliferation policy, told Rosatom’s director general that the plant “contains US-origin nuclear technical data that is export-controlled by the United States government”.
The nuclear plant in southeastern Ukraine – the biggest in Europe – was captured by Russian troops in the early days of the war.
It has been repeatedly cut off from the power grid due to shelling and there are fears over the risk of a disastrous nuclear accident.
Moscow has rejected calls for a demilitarised zone around the site.
Rosatom manages the plant, though it is still physically operated by Ukrainian staff.
According to the letter seen by CNN, the US energy department warned Rosatom that it is “unlawful” for any Russian citizens or entities to handle the US technology.
It was not clear if Rosatom responded to the letter dated 17 March.
‘Everyone in UK needs to be aware of cyber threats posed by Russia’
The UK government is trying to persuade business to help defend against potential cyber attacks from Russia because it only controls three of 13 elements of critical infrastructure, says defence and security analyst Michael Clarke.
Discussing the intervention by Cabinet minister Oliver Dowden at the CyberUK conference in Belfast (see post at 1.22pm), Clarke told Sky News: “He is trying to bring in the whole of British society to awareness of the cyber threat because some cyber threats are towards the government but many of them are towards private industry – and we know there’s a lot of them out there.
“There’s a group which is designated APT 29, which is Advanced Persist Threat 29, and that spans several groups that look as if they are private but in fact they’re not, they’re controlled by Moscow and their job is to plant little cyber time bombs in critical infrastructure.
“In reality, critical national infrastructure covers 13 sectors and the government only controls two or three of them while all other areas are privately owned.”
It is for this reason that Mr Dowden is calling on business leaders to shore up their cyber defences.
Discussing the Russian spy ships roaming Nordic waters we mentioned earlier (see post at 8.48am), Clarke added: “Russian spy ships are everywhere, they pose as fishing vessels or survey ships but they’re not and you can normally tell by the radio antenna they have on their masts.
“They are looking for vulnerabilities in Western societies. So, if windfarms end up constituting a large portion of our resources, then they need to be protected.
“Similarly undersea cables, 97% of the internet is supplied by undersea cables and in 2017 our chief of the defence staff warned about the threat of Russian ships to these cables.”
Source: Sky News
