Anti-war message appears in channel descriptions on Russian Smart TVs

Early in the morning on May 9, Russian Smart TV owners saw an anti-war message appear in the channel descriptions on their devices. Media celebrity and public figure Ksenia Sobchak called attention to the protest on her Telegram channel.

“The blood of thousands of Ukrainians and hundreds of their murdered children is on your hands. The TV and the authorities are lying. No to war,” read the message, which appeared in the descriptions of a number of different channels. Viewers reported seeing the message on a variety of digital and satellite-based TV services.

Viewers also saw the message in channel descriptions on Yandex.Teleprogramma, an online TV service. At the time of this report, the message was no longer being shown on the site.

Additionally, on the morning of May 9, hackers attacked the video service Rutube, causing the site to crash. At around 8:00 a.m., Rutube representatives of the service reported that they had “localized the incident,” but the site remained inaccessible.

• Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, hackers have infiltrated Russian media and government websites and published anti-war messages multiple times.