The Vatican City’s website was taken down after an apparent attack by hackers following comments made by Pope Francis about the alleged savagery of Chechen and Buryat soldiers in the Russian Army.
An investigation is ongoing as to the origins and nature of “abnormal” activity, the Holy See told Reuters. The Vatican has not made any comments about the possible identity of the attackers.
RUSSIA-ALIGNED HACKERS ATTACK CONGRESS’S WEBSITE
“Technical investigations are ongoing due to abnormal attempts to access the site,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni told Reuters.
On Monday, Francis gave an interview with the Catholic magazine America, in which he said that the minority Muslim Chechens and Buddhist Buryats were “the cruelest” of the Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
“Generally, the cruelest are perhaps those who are of Russia but are not of the Russian tradition, such as the Chechens, the Buryats, and so on,” he said.
The comments led to widespread outrage in Russia, resulting in public condemnations by many Russian officials, including the speaker of the Chechen Parliament, Magomed Daudov, who called it an expression of neo-Nazism.
“Neo-Nazism, which blossomed on the support of the West and flourished in Ukraine, became an ideological extension of the ‘collective West’ in its ugliest incarnation, bringing death, destruction and genocide,” Daudov said, referring to Francis’s remarks, according to Tass. He went on to deny that there has been any evidence of Russian war crimes and claimed that Francis supports gay marriage in an effort to invalidate his opinion.
Cyberattacks, though utilized by many different states, have become a hallmark of Russian warfare, something that has escalated following the country’s invasion of Ukraine in February. Following the invasion, several Russian “hacktivist” groups publicly pledged allegiance to the Russian government and have carried out several high-profile cyberattacks against nations perceived as hostile to Russia.
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In July, the Russian hacktivist group Killnet hacked the website of the U.S. Congress.
