The United States and its European allies on Tuesday blamed Russia for a cyberattack launched an hour ahead of the Kremlin's February invasion of Ukraine that targeted a U.S. communications company operating in Kyiv, causing damage throughout the continent.

The United States, Britain and the European Union on behalf of its member states blamed Russia for the Feb. 24 attack targeting a satellite network operated by Viasat.

The attack, they said, not only disrupted Ukrainian command and control during the invasion but caused indiscriminate communication outages and disruptions across Ukrainian public authorities, businesses and users as well as impacted wind farms and Internet users in Central Europe.

Viasat has said that tens of thousands of terminals were damaged beyond repair because of the attack.

"This unacceptable cyberattack is yet another example of Russia's continued pattern of irresponsible behavior in cyberspace, which also formed an integral part of its illegal and unjustified invasion of Ukraine," Josep Borrell, the high representative for the European Union, said in a statement.

The nations said the attack was launched an hour before Russia's major invasion of Ukraine began with the primary target being Kyiv's military but its impact wasn't limited to the battlefield.

"This is clear and shocking evidence of a deliberate and malicious attack by Russia against Ukraine, which had significant consequences on ordinary people and businesses in Ukraine and across Europe," Britain's foreign secretary, Liz Truss, said in a statement, stating the assessment was based on British and U.S. intelligence.

Borrell highlighted during a press conference that this cyberattack proves the "multiple layers of aggression and hybrid warfare that Russia is leading against Ukraine."

The nations also confirmed that Russia has been behind a series of cyberattacks since the invasion began with British and U.S. intelligence showing they began at least in January in advance of Russia's invasion.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that for months leading up to the invasion Russia targeted Ukraine with website defacements and conducted denial-of-service attacks as well as deployed attacks to delete data from government and private computers.

He said they have assessed that Russian military cyberoperators in January deployed multiple families of destructive wiper malware on Ukrainian government and private sector computers.

The assessment confirms a report published late last month by Microsoft detailing Russian cyberattacks its experts had observed affecting Ukraine in the past few months.

The report states that its threat intelligence center in January had discovered wiper malware in more than a dozen networks in Ukraine and that at least six Russia-aligned threat actors had conducted at least 237 operations against Ukraine since before the invasion began.

Microsoft also details how Russia has since been conducting cyberattacks in concert with its ground invasion.

The announcement Tuesday was made as cybersecurity leaders from the Five Eyes security pact met in Newport, Britain, to discus such threats.

Early this month, Britain announced it had uncovered a large-scale disinformation campaign launched by Russia targeting world leaders and Kremlin critics across social media platforms.

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