On 20 August 2023, journalists at RIA Melitopol, a local news portal in the city of Melitopol, in territories of southern Ukraine occupied by Russia early last year, said the media outlet’s Telegram channel had been attacked by pro-Russian hackers, as a result of which the team no longer had access to their account. RIA Melitopol continued to report on news from the city after its invasion, despite being forced into working undercover under Russian occupation.
Following the hack, the channel started to post pro-Russian propaganda under the RIA Melitopol brand, the media outlet wrote in a statement. The channel’s name was changed to Russian, as well as was its profile photo. RIA Melitopol said it had created a new channel on Telegram under the username @riamelitopolua, and called upon its nearly 80 thousand subscribers to unsubscribe from the hijacked channel and continue reading news in the new one created by the team.
“We fought the enemy on the informational front, the channel was a breath of fresh air not only for the residents of Melitopol, but also for residents of the entire occupied south of Ukraine, those who followed Ukrainian news in different parts of the world”, RIA Melitopol added in its statement.
In a post on Telegram, the Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, who was ousted from power following Russia’s invasion of southern Ukraine in 2022, also called upon inhabitants of Melitopol to unsubsribe from the hijacked channel and subscribe to the new one.