UNITED NATIONS, May 23. /TASS/. Russia's Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya on Monday said the West is flooding Ukraine with cyber weapons and creating an army of hackers that will later be a threat for the West.
"Along with the flooding of Ukraine with Western conventional weapons, there are uncontrolled handouts of cyber weapons and methods of their use," he said at a UN Security Council meeting on peace and security. "Practical skills are obtained by a huge number of people."
"According to [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky, there are more than 300,000 "fighters" in his cyber army," the diplomat said.
Nebenzya said that, as a result, an "uncontrollable cyber army" is being created, which, "having developed skills in Ukraine by attacking Russia, will not stop there."
"The hackers you have mobilized will spread all over the world, posing a threat to citizens of Western countries as well," he warned.
Nebenzya said the West’s increasing hostile activity in cyberspace is raising the risk of a direct military clash.
"The militarization of the digital space carried out by the West is greatly increasing the threat of a direct military clash, especially since the Kiev regime is actively mastering provocations in the information space using Western training manuals," he said. "But their consequences can be even more horrendous. Computer attacks on critical infrastructure can lead to real and large-scale human casualties."
Nebenzya warned that the risks of erroneous identification of the source would also increase in the event of a "false flag" attack, which is much easier to organize in the virtual space than in the real one.
"In this case, the risks of unintentional escalation and a mutual exchange of cyber strikes will increase many times over," he said.
The diplomat said the actions of the Kiev regime could lead to a full-scale cyber confrontation, which will draw in other countries. "Responsibility for such an escalation will fall entirely on Western countries that encourage the recklessness of the Kiev leadership," Nebenzya said.