Summary:
Russia’s New Times magazine has been hit with a state fine and a hacker attack on the day it published an investigation of president Vladimir Putin’s daughter. The penalty against New Times came the same day it published new information about Putin’s older daughter, Maria. After the magazine’s website also went down for several hours on Monday, editor Yevgeniya Albats told RBC she believed a distributed denial-of-service attack was the cause. The Kremlin has long been suspected of wielding cyber-attacks against political opponents and critical websites. Discussing Putin’s private life has long been taboo in Russia, but publications have recently begun to draw back the veil of secrecy, finding that his two daughters and their associates have enjoyed speedy success in politics and business along with other children of the Kremlin elite.
Russia’s New Times magazine has been hit with a state fine and a hacker attack on the day it published an investigation of president Vladimir Putin’s daughter. The penalty against New Times came the same day it published new information about Putin’s older daughter, Maria. After the magazine’s website also went down for several hours on Monday, editor Yevgeniya Albats told RBC she believed a distributed denial-of-service attack was the cause. The Kremlin has long been suspected of wielding cyber-attacks against political opponents and critical websites. Discussing Putin’s private life has long been taboo in Russia, but publications have recently begun to draw back the veil of secrecy, finding that his two daughters and their associates have enjoyed speedy success in politics and business along with other children of the Kremlin elite.
- A publication can be shut down if it receives two warnings in 12 months
- Albats said New Times last suffered such an attack after an interview with Putin foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2013
- Moscow State University official Katerina Tikhonova, 29, was outed as the president’s younger daughter last year and found to have corporate holdings worth more than £1.3bn with her partner Kirill Shamalov
- Using property and academic records and testimony from building employees, New Times found that Putin’s older daughter Maria, 30, lives in a well-guarded flat block near the American embassy in Moscow and is a graduate student at an endocrine centre run by the health ministry
In my opinion, I think this presents a Marxist view as the magazine got in trouble for writing about something that the President, an elite. The newspaper was fined and received a cyber-attack most like from elite people who wielded such attacks against political opponents. It shows that even magazine don't have a say and things do get censored or put down if the government is not happy with it.
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