- Genesis of Ukraine conflict – 36
Since beginning of the Russian invasion on Ukraine, China is pretending itself as a `natural’ by absenting during voting on the issue at UN forums. It is only accusing the United States of instigating the war in Ukraine and says NATO should have been disbanded following the break-up of the Soviet Union.
While China says it is not taking sides in the conflict, it has declared a “no limits” partnership with Moscow, has refused to condemn the invasion, opposes sanctions on Russia and routinely amplifies Russian disinformation about the conflict, including not referring to it as an invasion or a war in keeping with Russian practice.
However, latest information revealing that it had launched a massive cyber operation against the Ukrainian military and its nuclear facilities. This was exposed by The Times, obtaining UK intelligence reports.
The British reports were backed up by Ukraine’s national security service, the SBU, which claimed China coordinated thousands of cyberattacks and hacking attempts on official Ukrainian government sites.
Some of the sites targeted include over 600 websites belonging to Kyiv’s defense ministry, a statement released by SBU claimed. China’s goal in the attacks was to steal data and explore ways to shut down Ukrainian defenses and civilian infrastructure, the SBU further claimed.
The attacks, which allegedly began prior to the end of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, peaked on February 23 and Russian invastion started 24 hours later.
The SBU stated it is confident in its attribution of the attacks to China due to the “trademark tools and methods” used by the Chinese military’s cyber units.
Responding to SBU’s claims, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) told The Times that it is “investigating these allegations with our international partners.” Intelligence reports from the US indicate that the information gathered by British and Ukrainian intelligence is accurate, the report also stated.
However, the Ukrainian security service denied on April 1 night that it had supplied any information on the alleged attacks. It added: “The SBU has nothing to do with the findings of the Times. The Security Service of Ukraine does not currently have such data and no investigation is underway.”
Jamie MacColl, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, said the reported attempts appeared to fit a Chinese tactic of scanning for vulnerabilities in IT infrastructure, such as firewalls and virtual private networks.
Russia is now complaining
When Russia invaded Ukraine more than a month ago, it was feared that there would be massive cyber-attacks on Ukraine and its supporters, including the NATO powers led by the United States. But such is the situation today that it is Russia that is complaining of being the target of cyber offensives.
In a statement on March 29, the website of the Russian foreign ministry said, “In fact, state institutions, the media, critical infrastructure facilities and life support systems are subjected to powerful blows every day with the use of advanced information and communication technologies.
At the instigation of the Kiev regime, an ‘international call ‘of anti-Russian computer specialists has been announced, in fact, forming ‘offensive cyber forces’. The bill for malicious attacks against us goes to hundreds of thousands per day.
Of course, the Russian statement talked of Moscow’s capacity to resist these attacks. In fact, it went to the extent of warning that “No one should have any doubts: the cyber aggression unleashed against Russia will lead to serious consequences for its instigators and executors. The sources of attacks will be established, the attackers will inevitably be held responsible for what they have done in accordance with the requirements of the law.”
Interestingly, this Russian complaint/threat came after five days of the US charging four Russian hackers over cyber-attacks on the global energy sector between 2012 and 2018. On March 24, the US unveiled criminal charges against them, saying they engaged in two major hacking campaigns that targeted the global energy sector and affected thousands of computers across 135 countries.
That Russia’s cyber power is formidable is well known, particularly to the Americans, many of whom still believe that but for Russian cyber intervention, Donald Trump would have never become the President of the United States.
With regard to Ukraine, it is also well known how in 2015 alleged Russian hackers paralyzed the Ukrainian power grid by using a Trojan virus, Black Energy, which resulted in almost 2,30,000 households losing power. In 2016, there was a similar cyber-attack, but this time it not only targeted the power grid but also disturbed Ukraine’s banking and governmental networks.
However, so far in the ongoing war, many military experts believe that Russia has not resorted to the type of cyber warfare in Ukraine as it was feared. Ukraine has witnessed attacks, but these have been manageable and containable.
According to BBC, Ukraine’s national telecoms operator Ukrtelecom now says that it is restoring internet services after driving back a major cyber-attack. But then UKrtelecom has also admitted that it had restricted access to the customers “to protect military users and critical infrastructure”.
Experts are of the view that Russian restraint in the cyber warfare in Ukraine could be due to the fact that Ukraine is not a novice in cyber warfare and that any attack on that country could have adverse impacts on Russia itself.
Biden warning to Jinping
On March 18, the US president, Joe Biden, warned his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, of “consequences” if China provided material support to Russia during the invasion.
Xi and Vladimir Putin met in Beijing at the start of the Winter Olympics in February and issued a joint statement saying the bonds between the two countries had “no limits”. Xi and Putin also made clear in the statement that they opposed any further expansion of NATO.
Some reports suggest that Putin postponed attack on Ukraine at the Chinese persuasion only, as it requested to wait till the end of Winter Olympics. It reveals that China is fully aware of Russian preparations for the war.
The Guardian reported that, Ciaran Martin, a professor of practice at the Blavatnik school of government at Oxford University and former head of the NCSC, said: “We should be very cautious about this in two areas. First, there is an important difference between digital spying and disruptive attack and on the basis of the information publicly available, this looks like the former.
“Second, there isn’t anything in the publicly available evidence that implies collusion between China and Russia. Added to this now, of course, is the official denial from the Ukrainian Security Service. More facts are needed but for now we should not jump to conclusions”.
“As the culprit and leading instigator of the Ukraine crisis, the US has led NATO to engage in five rounds of eastward expansion in the last two decades after 1999,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters at a daily briefing after six weeks of the war.
“The number of NATO members increased from 16 to 30, and they have moved eastward more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) to somewhere near the Russian border, pushing Russia to the wall step by step,” Zhao said.
Meanwhile, European Union and Chinese leaders have met on April 1, for their first summit in two years with Brussels pressing Beijing for assurances that it will neither supply Russia with arms nor help Moscow circumvent Western sanctions imposed over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In uncommonly open language, EU officials close to the summit preparations said any help given to Russia would damage China’s international reputation and jeopardise relations with its biggest trade partners – Europe and the United States.
Another pointed out that more than a quarter of China’s global trade was with the bloc and the United States last year, against just 2.4 percent with Russia. “Do we prolong this war or do we work together to end this war? That is the essential question for the summit,” the official said.
China itself has concerns that European countries are taking harder-line foreign policy cues from the United States and has called for the EU to “exclude external interference” from its relations with China. Relations were already strained before the Ukraine war.
