At the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Anonymous launched Operation Russia, performing cyber attacks against Russian government websites, banks, broadcasting networks, and news outlets. The state-controlled broadcasting network Russia Today (RT), known to spread Russian propaganda, confirmed that its website was unavailable most of February 24 and 25, 2022. The outage resulted from a large DDoS attack originating from over 100 million devices. Anonymous also claimed to be responsible for defacing the websites of Russian news outlets Tass, Izvestia and Kommersant, whose sites were replaced with an anti-Putin message and a call to end the war. Anonymous mobilized people via Twitter, suggesting they counter misinformation and censorship by the Russian government by informing Russian people of the reality of Ukraine’s invasion by posting online reviews on Russian restaurants and businesses on Google Maps. Several Russian state-owned broadcasting channels were hacked by the collective and started broadcasting patriotic songs, pro-Ukraine content, and true images of the war in Ukraine.
However, the decentralized, anonymous and leaderless nature of the hacktivist collective makes it difficult to attribute attacks to the group. Anyone can claim to work under the Anonymous banner. During the cyber war against Russia, a Twitter account linked to Anonymous had to denounce fake claims made by accounts that pretended to speak and act on behalf of the collective.
On March 1, 2022, the Russian hacker group Killnet claimed they had taken down the Anonymous website "anonymoushackers[.]net" and called on Russians not to believe the internet fakes and to stay calm. According to Killnet, "the internet is full of fake information about hacking Russian banks, attacks on the servers of Russian media and much more. All this has no danger to people. This "information bomb" carries only text. And no more harm. Don't give in to fake information on the internet. Do not doubt your country."