Millions of people in Ukraine and Russia received false emergency alerts warning of an imminent nuclear strike on Sunday night, after civil defence apps used in both countries were apparently hacked.
In Ukraine, users of the Air Alert app — which has 46 million downloads and 7 million daily users, according to the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph — received a message reading: “Radiation threat. Radiation threat declared in Kyiv. Don’t go outside.”
A second message, sent in Russian to Ukrainian users, warned of an imminent strike by a Russian Oreshnik missile and said “A nuclear alert has been activated across Ukraine.” Further messages claimed a chemical weapons attack alert had been issued for Kyiv and that “street fighting” had broken out in the city.
Russian citizens in Moscow and other cities received similarly alarming messages through their own national air raid warning app. According to The Times, they were told to “stock up urgently on food for three weeks and hide” and to “take cover in your fucking shelter.”
The false alerts went out during an actual Russian air raid on Ukraine, amid dozens of genuine warnings of incoming drones and guided bombs. Ukraine’s Air Force urged the public to “stay calm,” stating through official channels: “The Air Alert app has likely been compromised. There is no radiation threat!”
Ukraine blamed Russian hackers for the breach. Air force spokesman Yuri Ignat confirmed to AFP that the Air Alert app had been “subjected to hostile interference.”
A Real Attack Underway
The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia had launched 193 drones overnight, 75 of them jet-powered, of which 154 were shot down or redirected to the ground. Twenty-six locations were struck by the drone wave, and a further nine were damaged by falling wreckage from intercepted attacks.
Russia holds the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. Ukraine, a former nuclear power, surrendered its own arsenal in the 1990s in exchange for security guarantees of its independence. Nuclear threats have been a recurring feature of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine since 2022, though they have typically been directed at Ukraine’s Western backers rather than at Ukraine itself.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has on several occasions raised the possibility of Ukraine regaining nuclear capability, a move widely seen as an effort to press Western governments into providing more robust military and financial support.
