The French Foreign Ministry asks to stop Russian cyber attacks, which, according to him, destabilize public opinion and interfere with political systems.
The Russian Embassy in France has condemned the French government on Wednesday, according to which the Russian GRU’s Russian Military Intelligence service has been implementing a French cyber offensive called APT28 for several years. According to the AFP report, TASR reports this.
“We strongly reject the French party’s unsubstantiated accusations,” said the Russian embassy in France on the telegram platform.
Incidents in France
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Tuesday that approximately ten French entities have been the target of the Russian GRU since 2021. The cyber attack was also faced by the organization involved in the organization of last year’s Olympic Games in Paris. In 2017, the attack was also exhibited by the French President Emmanuel Macron election crew and one of the French television networks – TV5monde.
AFP recalls that the Western governments have been accounted for years by Russian news services for cyber attacks and interference in their political systems, including pre -election campaigns.
Sanctions against GRU
French diplomacy chief Jean-Neloel Barrot also raised these accusations before the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). He asked for immediate stopping attacks by Russia, whose ambassador to the UN was present at that time at the meeting.
The Russian Federation, according to Barrot, used the cyber attacks of an offshoot of a military intelligence GRU known as APT28. It is an abbreviation for Advanced Persistant Threat (advanced threat), which is a Russian actor that is well known to the United States and the European Union countries. They have already imposed sanctions on the persons and entities associated with this group for attempts to destabilize public opinion.
Accusations of interventions
The US secret services have accused the APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, of interfering in the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump by publishing tens of thousands of reports from the Democratic Party and People close to Hillary Clinton.
Relations between Moscow and Paris are tense since Russia has launched a military invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022, while France is one of the main allies Kiev, it recalls AFP.
