In a country under nightly bombardment, a phone buzzing with an air raid warning is a signal to move, fast. On Sunday night Ukrainians got far more than the usual alarm. Shortly before 11 p.m., the hugely popular Air Alert app lit up every region of the map in red, and users in Kyiv and elsewhere were also told to stay indoors because of radiation, chemical weapons and fighting in the streets.
None of it was real. Several notices were written in Russian, and one announced a nationwide nuclear alert while name-checking Oreshnik, the hypersonic missile Moscow likes to brandish. The air force quickly posted that the app had probably been tampered with by the enemy and that there was no radiation danger at all. The developers switched the service off, later confirmed a cyberattack and brought it back step by step. Kyiv’s administration urged people to rely on the city’s own smartphone service and on street sirens for the time being. The fake spilled into the physical world as well: around Lviv, near the Polish border, some public sirens and loudspeakers sounded a radiation warning.
Reactions were more mocking than fearful. Plenty of Ukrainians shared jokes online, treating the clumsy hoax as further proof of who was likely behind it.
Hours later Moscow reported a mirror image. Early on Monday the Emergency Situations Ministry said its own alert app had suffered what it called a “massive cyberattack” and had been used to spread false information. Screenshots circulating online showed crude, profanity-laced messages claiming nuclear warheads were heading for every Russian region and urging people to hoard food. Officials played the episode down, describing the app as an extra service on top of a public alert system that never stopped working.
Nobody has credibly claimed both incidents, and it is unclear whether they are linked. A pro-Kremlin Telegram outlet said a group called Hitcorecorp admitted to the Ukrainian hack, which could not be independently confirmed, while the slangy wording on both sides points analysts towards freelance hacktivists. The timing was striking: the attacks came only hours after a six-day local truce around occupied Oleshky had expired.
