Poltava's "Zmist" says their website has been under a Russian attack for three days

Photo by gazetadita.al

The Poltava publication "Zmist" stated that the Russians attacked its website, reports the newspaper on their Telegram channel.

The editors note that the DDoS attack has been going on for three days in a row, since April 13.

"ZMIST has been under a Russian DDoS-attack since Saturday (April 13. – Ed.). It is currently at its peak, and our website is running slower and asking you to confirm you are human for security reasons," the editorial team said.

The outlet notes that they are working to restore the website: "What matters is that we keep working while our tech support is repelling the attack."

The outlet's news can be accessed on social media.

In her comment to the IMI representative in Poltava, the "Zmist" editor-in-chief Anastasia Dobryak noted that the issues first emerged on April 13, and as soon as April 14 the team could not fix the connection between the hosting and the return of pictures on the website, and the page loading slowed down.

"There were speculations that it was an attack, but we leaned towards the internal malfunction theory. Later, the tech support detected unusual traffic from abroad. Analyzing the IP addresses and the traffic composition 'clogging up' our website, they discovered that it was in Russia. Currently, the website is heavily loaded with bot requests, the tech support has installed additional protection to keep the site running. You may experience loading problems on some pages right now. We are working to fix them promptly," commented Dobryak.

She also added that the team views the situation as an attempt to destroy an independent media outlet and crowdfunding platform that is supporting the army. In the future, "Zmist" plans to make the website unavailable in Russia and Belarus.