Ukraine’s 1+1 media group satellite TV channels hit by cyberattack

(Reuters) -One of Ukraine’s main media companies, 1+1 Media, said its satellite TV channels had suffered a cyberattack on Wednesday.

It said in a statement that 39 channels, including some of its own, were currently unavailable.

“Another attempt took place to jam satellite broadcasting of Ukraine on the Astra 4A 11766 H transponder, where 39 TV channels broadcast,” the company said.

European provider SES that operates Astra told Reuters a few dozen video distributors in Europe faced outages caused by “external radio frequency interference” on Wednesday. It added that satellites were safe.

“Our teams are currently investigating and looking into all possible ways to mitigate the impact on affected services,” it said.

1+1 Media said that since March Russia had started “active signal jamming” of TV channels on two satellites that belong to SES and Eutelsat.

Both companies told Reuters that in March specialists identified external “radio frequency interference” that was investigated, and respective measures were put into force.

Ukraine has suffered a string of cyber attacks since Russia’s full scale invasion in February 2022, which Kyiv has blamed on Moscow. Russian authorities have not responded in the past to requests for comment about such allegations.

Ukraine’s 24 Channel said on its website that its satellite broadcast had also been affected as hackers “launched their propaganda”.

“After two hours of the attack, the signal was restored, but the attack started again,” it said.

(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa; Editing by Mark Potter, Kirsten Donovan)