We begin with breaking news, of course, as war unfolds in Ukraine.
Pregnant women were among those who were helped out of the building.
Ukraine called it a war crime.
Putin and Lukashenko are dictators, are killers.
As we've seen right now,
they don’t support democracies,
they don’t provide any political freedom in countries
They threaten, not only Belarus or Ukraine,
they threaten the whole world.
The Belarusian regime is now an ally of the Russian regime.
But we didn't choose Lukashenko.
Lukashenko, who’s ruled this country with an iron fist.
And some of the majority of people do not support
this ally between Russia and Belarus.
Online vigilantes are joining the fight against Russia.
Cyber Partisans are highly organized hacktivist group
that is trying to overthrow the illegitimate,
dictatorship regime in Belarus.
They’re also attacking, now, military troops that try to
be brought to the border of Ukraine.
Information is power.
Without independent Ukraine, there is no chance for Belarus.
My name is Yuliana and I’m the spokesperson for Cyber Partisans.
Cyber Partisans, we’ve been called one of
the most successful hacktivist groups ever in existence.
There are around 30 members.
Since the war began in Ukraine,
five more people joined.
So none of them are professional hackers,
but they learned everything on the go...
from tutorials, videos,
also just by doing hacks.
One of our recent targets was a Belarusian railway system.
A group calling themselves the Belarusian Cyber Partisans
has hacked into Belarus’ National Railway Network
in an attempt to disrupt the build up of these Russian vehicles
and troops in their country.
The goal was to affect the Russian military troops coming to Belarus
and then going through Belarus to the northern border with Ukraine,
and also trying to help remove Russian military troops that now
occupy in Belarus and are pulling Belarus into war with Ukraine
In a massive show of force not seen since the Cold War,
30,000 Russian troops now stationed in Belarus-
The fear of troops in Belarus coming down toward Kyiv,
in a pincer move, surrounding Kyiv.
US officials I talked to very worried about that.
A lot of people actually ask me, “why is it efficient?”
Why would it affect Russian military troops?
Russia's military is able to rely heavily on the rail network.
It was trains that moved the troops, tanks and trucks
to and from Yelnya, into Kursk and across the Bryansk
and Smolensk Oblasts.
Tanks cannot be transported by planes.
Heavy artillery cannot be transported by planes.
So they do need to use those trains.
Cyber Partisans attacked the internal network of
the railway systems, as well as equipment,
software and any databases that are associated with the railway systems.
They run many softwares on Windows XP,
which is like a really old program and can be easily attacked.
So that was another reason
for them to show how Lukashenko's regime disregards the security of
the key infrastructure in Belarus.
The operation to disrupt the railway seems to have worked,
or at least to some extent.
The railway company was forced to issue a press release,
stating that,
“For technical reasons, some services,
like electronic travel documents, have been disrupted.”
Many trains were delayed. 90% of internal networks.
We hope that this time of slowing down
the movement of Russian forces will help Ukrainians to regroup,
to resist the attack from the Belarusian border.
And we are trying to buy some time in a sense.
Another important aspect of our work is exposing human rights abuses.
Massive peaceful protests have gripped Belarus,
calling for an end, to what’s known as, Europe’s last dictatorship.
When the protests started in 2020,
after the presidential elections in Belarus,
where Lukashenko did not win the elections,
People went to protest.
Not only in the capital of Belarus, Minsk,
but in smaller towns and villages all over the whole of Belarus.
But there were brutally suppressed.
The people who demonstrated in the early days were detained by
the thousands and some disappeared or were found dead.
Cyber Partisans hacked the Minister of Interior Affairs.
They also got access to the
wire tapped conversations
between high level top officials and politicians
including the police officers that commit crimes
and confirm that they did some attacks on peaceful protesters.
It shows how policemen are discussing
how they beat up a woman for just honking during protests.
They’re also discussing what inhuman conditions they need to
create for those protesters,
peaceful protesters, in prison.
They also got access to the recordings of people
singing in prisons.
Which was actually very inspiring for many Belarusian people,
listening to how people are still trying to resist,
even though they're locked in prison.
And one of the reasons it was so easy to hack these systems is
because Lukashenko prefers loyalism over professionalism.
They didn't secure the systems.
So as much as people admire the work of Cyber Partisans,
we should also state that it was not that hard to hack
because Lukashenko’s regime disregarded
simple cybersecurity practices.
Cyber Partisans, including myself,
are now working with many investigative organizations
that we help by providing information
on all these human rights abuses,
trying to build a case that will be,
in the future, used against the regime.
And I think that’s how we can see many people
in other regions fight the dictatorship regimes.
By using IT technologies,
by using their brains, by using creativity in targeting
the regime’s people.
So that’s what Cyber Partisans are kind of doing right now
Yes, it’s dangerous,
but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.