Trudeau Shrugs Off Pro-Russian Hack on Canada as Ukraine PM Visits

Pro-Russian hackers disrupted Canadian government websites during a visit by Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal Tuesday, but this will not weaken Ottawa's strong bond with Kyiv, said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The official websites of the Canadian leader and the Senate, as well as others, were down in the morning.

Trudeau confirmed they'd been hacked, while a group calling itself NoName took responsibility in a post on Telegram.

"It's not uncommon for Russian hackers to target countries as they are showing their steadfast support for Ukraine, as they're welcoming Ukrainian delegations or leadership to visit. So the timing isn't surprising," Trudeau told a joint news conference with Shmyhal.

"But in case anyone was wondering, Russia being able to bring down an official government of Canada webpage for a few hours is in no way going to dissuade us from our unshakeable support of Ukraine," he said.

Robyn Hawco, a spokeswoman for the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canada's electronic eavesdropping agency, said in an email to AFP that an unspecified number of Canadian government websites were offline.

But she added that the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack had "very little impact on the systems affected."

Shmyhal, who is scheduled to visit Washington next, and Trudeau also announced the conclusion of talks to modernize free trade between their two nations, new Canadian shipments of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, and a deal with Canadian firm Cameco to supply Ukraine with nuclear fuel until 2035.

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Ottawa also unveiled new sanctions targeting Russians and Russian entities including those with links to the Wagner mercenary group and Russia's aviation sector, as well as the Belarusian financial sector.