SHANGHAI: China has experienced continuous cyberattacks since February in which internet addresses in the United States have been used to seize control of Chinese computers to target Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, state news agency Xinhua said on Friday.
It cited the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center of China (CNCERT/CC), a cybersecurity technical centre that leads efforts to prevent and detect cybersecurity threats to the country.
"Monitoring by the CNCERT/CC found that since late February, China's internet has continuously faced cyberattacks from abroad. These overseas groups attacked by taking control of computers in the country to carry out cyber attacks on Russia, Ukraine and Belarus," it quoted the centre as saying.
"After analysis, most the addresses for these attacks came from the United States," it said, adding that a few came from other countries such as Germany and the Netherlands.
Cyberattacks have been a major point of tension between the United States and its allies and China, as the former have accused China of a carrying out a global cyberespionage campaign. China says that it does not engage in cyberattacks and has called such allegations "malicious smears".
In Ukraine, Russian troops launched a long-range attack on two military airfields in the cities of Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk and had taken them out of action, Russian news agencies quoted Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov as saying on Friday.
He also said that Russian forces had destroyed 3,213 Ukrainian military installations since the launch of what Russia still calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine.
RIA news agency quoted Russia's defence ministry as saying Russian-backed separatists had captured the Ukrainian city of Volnovakha north of the besieged Azov Sea port of Mariupol. Volnovakha is strategically important as the northern gateway to Mariupol.
About 222,000 people have been evacuated to Russia from Ukraine and its two Russian-backed rebel regions, the TASS news agency said on Friday, citing an unidentified source.
Ukraine's emergency services reported that civilian targets came under Russian shelling in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Friday. One person was killed in what appeared to be the first direct attack on the city.
"There were three air strikes on the city, namely hitting a kindergarten, an apartment building and a two-story shoe factory, starting a fire. One person died," the emergency services said in a statement.
The city of Lutsk in northwestern Ukraine was also reported to have been shelled. "Explosions at the airport side," Lutsk mayor Ihor Polishchuk wrote on Facebook.
And the Ukrainian state nuclear power firm Energoatom announced it will no longer buy Russian nuclear fuel. Ukraine operates Soviet-era nuclear reactors, importing its fuel from Russia and the United State.
