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On May 9, 2024, viewers in Ukraine and Latvia saw footage of Russia’s Victory Day parade interrupt local TV programming. The incidents did not use the same method: Ukrainian officials reported interference with satellite broadcasts, while a report on Latvia’s Balticom service attributed the disruption to an attack on its interactive-TV server.
What happened on May 9, 2024?
As Russia held its Victory Day celebrations, parade footage appeared in place of programming on television services in Ukraine and Latvia. In Ukraine, the national media regulator said interference affected broadcasters carried through the SES ASTRA 4A satellite. Its account described local programming being replaced by the parade broadcast. Ukraine’s National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting listed affected channels including ICTV, ICTV2, OCE, M1, M2, Army TV, Culture, My-Ukraine, Pershyi, Rada, Svitlo, Sonce, STB, Your Series and Espreso.
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Dark Reading reported that at least 15 Ukrainian channels were interrupted. That total is the publication’s reported count; the regulator’s statement lists broadcasters but does not provide a total. Nor does the list establish that every channel was affected continuously or for the same length of time. Dark Reading’s May 13, 2024 report also described a separate disruption affecting Latvian provider Balticom.
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Ukraine’s regulator described interference with satellite distribution, not a takeover of each broadcaster’s internal production systems. Its May 10 statement said the affected services were carried via SES ASTRA 4A and that their programming was supplanted by parade footage. A response document published through the Council of Europe described recurring radio interference at SES ASTRA transponders and called the May 9 incident the most extensive attack on Ukrainian channels carried on SES ASTRA up to that point. It also said SES ASTRA had been contacted and that similar interference was reported as originating from Russian territory. The Council of Europe document presents Ukraine’s response, rather than an independent technical investigation.
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Ukraine’s National Cybersecurity Coordination Center later described interference with satellite broadcasts of Inter and StarLightMedia channels that streamed the Moscow parade to Ukrainian viewers. Its May 2024 digest placed the incident in the context of reciprocal interventions in Russian television distribution. The Ukrainian sources attribute the interference to Russia, but do not identify an individual operator or establish every step in a complete forensic chain. Ukraine’s National Cybersecurity Coordination Center
What was different about the Balticom incident in Latvia?
The Latvian account involved a different distribution layer. Dark Reading reported that Balticom’s interactive-TV server was targeted and attributed to Latvia’s media regulator, NEPLP, the finding that the provider’s network infrastructure itself was not compromised. The report says parade footage was shown through the service. This is secondary reporting: the technical detail here rests on Dark Reading’s account, and the underlying NEPLP statement and a precise technical timeline are not established by the available sources.
That distinction matters. A disruption to satellite signal distribution in Ukraine and an attack on an interactive-TV server in Latvia are not evidence of one shared access method or a breach of every broadcaster’s systems. The sources support describing two separate incidents that produced a similar on-screen result.
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What can be concluded about responsibility?
For Ukraine, the regulator and state cybersecurity sources attribute the satellite interference to Russia, and the Council of Europe-hosted response says comparable interference was reported as originating from Russian territory. The accounts do not name a specific person or group responsible or supply a complete independently verified technical chain. For Latvia, the technical account is less direct: Dark Reading attributes its description of the Balticom server targeting to NEPLP. The available account does not support extending Ukraine’s attribution to the Latvian incident.
The Ukrainian response document characterizes the broader context this way: “Cyberattacks are a full-fledged component of russia’s war against Ukraine.” This is an institutional statement in the submitted response, not a quotation from a named individual. Ukraine’s regulator also described the event as “another stage of the information war against Ukraine when Ukrainian media and consumers of information become the direct object of aggression”; that wording is an English translation of its Ukrainian statement.
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