MOSCOW, July 18. /TASS/. Microsoft is executing the order from Pentagon and special services to take control of Ukraine’s entire information infrastructure and strip it of its digital sovereignty, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov said on Monday, commenting on Microsoft’s anti-Russian report.
"We took note of this report (Defending Ukraine: Early Lessons from the Cyber War - TASS). Everything speaks that the report has been fabricated to fit the US administration’s Russophobic moods or was written to the dictation of its officials. It is based on the myths acting in Moscow’s interests, scary stories about the Russian threat to the so-called democracies. The company spares itself the trouble of providing any proof," he said.
"We have all the grounds to say that Microsoft is executing the order from Pentagon and special services to take full control of Ukraine’s entire information infrastructure and strip it of any digital sovereignty. As a matter of fact, the company has admitted that in this report," he added.
Hiding behind the promises to help Ukraine strengthen its security, Microsoft threat analysis center has persuaded Ukraine’s authorities to grant remote access to their networks. "With the use of the RiskIQ services and under the pretext of assessing the level of protection of Ukrainian government bodies’ information resources, they spotted devices with unpatched vulnerabilities, which can be used by the Americans," the Russian diplomat said.
"In other words, the [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky regime has given the American company access to all communications devices in the country. He has given it instruments for spying, provocations, computer attacks "under somebody else’s flag." It looks like Ukraine’s notorious ‘IT army,’ which keeps on boasting hacker attacks on Russian servers, is also the work of Microsoft," he stressed.
According to the Russian diplomat, the company obviously hopes for lavish revenues from the defense budget’s allocations won cyber wars (15 billion US dollars). Moreover, in his words, even Western experts, in particular from Johns Hopkins University, have lambasted the company’s report as ungrounded.
He called on countries using Microsoft services to take thought about what this company really is. "The company has discredited itself by trying to score points with the American authorities," he noted. "This instrument of Washington’s aggressive policy can be used any time to infringe upon the sovereignty of the countries it doesn’t like and such subversive actions will be justified by another propaganda opus," he added.