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US Indicts Russian Intelligence Officials over Cyberattacks Targeting Ukraine

FILE PHOTO: A man holds a laptop computer as cyber code is projected on him in this illustration picture taken on May 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A man holds a laptop computer as cyber code is projected on him in this illustration picture taken on May 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration/File Photo
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US Indicts Russian Intelligence Officials over Cyberattacks Targeting Ukraine

FILE PHOTO: A man holds a laptop computer as cyber code is projected on him in this illustration picture taken on May 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A man holds a laptop computer as cyber code is projected on him in this illustration picture taken on May 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration/File Photo

The US on Thursday charged five Russian intelligence officials and a Russian civilian with conspiring to launch cyberattacks against Ukraine and its allies in a bid to hobble Ukraine.
In a revised indictment unsealed on Thursday, the Justice Department said a cyber unit of Russia's military intelligence agency conducted "large-scale cyber operations" starting as far back as 2020, before Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The original indictment, filed in June in the US District Court for the District of Maryland, only named a single defendant: Amin Stigal.
According to Reuters, it accused him of conspiring with Russia's military intelligence agency, known as the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, or GRU, to launch cyber attacks against computer systems in Ukraine and other countries, including a computer network maintained by an unnamed US agency in Maryland.
Thursday's news comes just one day after the US took several legal actions against Russia to combat alleged efforts to meddle in the 2024 presidential elections, including charging two employees of the Russian state media network RT and sanctioning RT and its top network editor.
It also came on the same day that the Justice Department announced it had secured two indictments against Russian TV contributor Dimitri Simes and his wife over sanctions violations and money laundering.
Earlier on Thursday, intelligence agencies in the US and the United Kingdom warned that a cyber espionage group located within Russia's GRU known as "Unit 29155" was destructively targeting critical national infrastructure.
Unit 29155, which is the group at the heart of Thursday's indictment, is a covert part of the GRU which carries out subversion, sabotage and assassination missions outside Russia, Western officials told Reuters.

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Deadly Super Typhoon Yagi Makes Landfall in China’s Hainan 

In this image released by Xinhua News Agency, workers cut redundant branches off of trees along a street ahead of the landfall of typhoon Yagi in Haikou, south China's Hainan Province, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (Guo Cheng/Xinhua via AP)
In this image released by Xinhua News Agency, workers cut redundant branches off of trees along a street ahead of the landfall of typhoon Yagi in Haikou, south China's Hainan Province, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (Guo Cheng/Xinhua via AP)
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Deadly Super Typhoon Yagi Makes Landfall in China’s Hainan 

In this image released by Xinhua News Agency, workers cut redundant branches off of trees along a street ahead of the landfall of typhoon Yagi in Haikou, south China's Hainan Province, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (Guo Cheng/Xinhua via AP)
In this image released by Xinhua News Agency, workers cut redundant branches off of trees along a street ahead of the landfall of typhoon Yagi in Haikou, south China's Hainan Province, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (Guo Cheng/Xinhua via AP)

Asia's strongest storm this year, Super Typhoon Yagi, made landfall along the coast of China's Hainan province on Friday, bringing gales and heavy rain which shut schools for a second day and cancelled flights in the South China Sea region. 

Packing maximum sustained winds of 234 km per hour (145 mph) near its center, Yagi registers as the world's second-most powerful tropical cyclone in 2024 so far, after the Category 5 Atlantic hurricane Beryl, and the most severe in the Pacific basin this year. 

After more than doubling in strength since killing 16 people in the northern Philippines earlier this week, Yagi slammed into the city of Wenchang on Hainan island. 

The typhoon had shut schools, businesses and transport links in Hong Kong, Macau, Hainan and Guandong as well as airports in Vietnam, which it is predicted to hit, along with Laos, over the weekend. 

Vietnam's Civil Aviation Authority said four airports in the north, including Hanoi's Noi Bai International, would be closed on Saturday due to the storm. 

In the financial hub of Hong Kong, the stock exchange was shuttered while schools remained closed on Friday as a precautionary measure. 

Hong Kong's airport authority said operations had largely returned to normal after 50 flights were cancelled on Thursday, and the city of over 7 million people also lowered its typhoon warning by a notch after midday, with winds expected to weaken gradually as Yagi moves away, allowing businesses to reopen. 

The world's longest sea crossing, the main bridge linking Hong Kong with Macau and Zhuhai in Guangdong, also reopened on Friday afternoon after being shut since Thursday. 

However, intense rainbands associated with Yagi will still bring heavy squally showers to the territory. 

RARE LANDFALL 

Yagi is the most severe storm to land in Hainan since 2014, when Typhoon Rammasun slammed into the island province as a Category Five tropical cyclone. Rammasun killed 88 people in Hainan, Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan and caused economic losses of more than 44 billion yuan ($6.25 billion). 

"I'm worried about this typhoon. It could destroy months of hard work," said Qizhao, a banana farmer at the village of Gaozhou in Guangdong, adding that villagers were reinforcing their trees with poles to protect them from the wind. 

Formed over the warm seas east of the Philippines and following a similar path to Rammasun, Yagi arrived in China as a Category Four typhoon, ushering in winds strong enough to overturn vehicles, uproot trees and severely damage roads, bridges and buildings. 

In Hainan's capital Haikou, streets were deserted as people stayed indoors, photographs on social media showed. 

Its landfall in Hainan is rare, as most typhoons landing on the duty-free island are classified as weak. From 1949 to 2023, 106 typhoons landed in Hainan but only nine were classified as super typhoons. 

Typhoons are becoming stronger, fueled by warmer oceans, amid climate change, scientists say. Last week, Typhoon Shanshan slammed into southwestern Japan, the strongest storm to hit the country in decades. 

Yagi, which strengthened into a super typhoon on Wednesday night, is named after the Japanese word for goat and the constellation of Capricornus, a mythical creature that is half goat, half fish.