The Kremlinxe2x80x99s website has gone offline amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Visitors to the page xe2x80x93 at Kremlin.ru xe2x80x93 were unable to load the site as usual.

The same problems were found on other official websites, including that of the State Duma.

It follows similar outages in Ukraine over recent days. Hours before Russia began its invasion, the official websites of the Ukrainian parliament, government and foreign ministry were knocked offline in what the country said was a cyber attack.

The ongoing tensions between Russia and Ukraine have led to a flurry of cyber attacks and other internet security activity, including those outages and the discovery of a piece of software that was wiping computers in the country.

Cybersecurity firm ESET said that it had identified a piece of destructive software circulating on hundreds of computers in the country, in what Ukrainian officials said was an intensifying wave of hacks aimed at the country.

The company said on Twitter that the data wiping program had been installed on hundreds of machines in the country, an attack it said had likely been in the works for the past couple of months.

Vikram Thakur of cybersecurity firm Symantec, which is also looking into the incident, told Reuters that infections had spread outside Ukraine.

xe2x80x9cWe see activity across Ukraine and Latvia,xe2x80x9d Thakur said. A Symantec spokesperson later added Lithuania.

Who is responsible for the wiper is unclear, although suspicion immediately fell on Russia, which has repeatedly been accused of launching data-scrambling hacks against Ukraine and other countries. Russia has denied the allegations.

The victims in Ukraine included a government agency and a financial institution, according to three people who studied the malware since its release.

The new cyberattack required existing access to function, meaning those computer networks were already compromised, said Juan-Andres Guerrero-Saade, a cybersecurity researcher at digital security firm SentinelOne.

Additional reporting by Reuters

xe2x80x9cOur operations are targeting the Russian government,xe2x80x9d Anonymous writes on Twitter. The hacker movement is known for its various worldwide cyberattacks over the last two decades.

First down in the internett-attack, said to be axc2xa0response to the Ukraine War, was the Kremlin-backed TV channel RT.com. The news-site isxc2xa0directed to audiences outside Russia by broadcasting in English, Spanish, German, French and Arabic via its internet portals. The RT is considered a major propaganda channel for the Putin regime.

Since Friday afternoon, also the portal of Russiaxe2x80x99s Defense Ministry has been down, returning the 418 HTTP error code. Such error response is the indication for the server xe2x80x9cis permanently, a Teapot.xe2x80x9d

Saturday morning, also the Putin Administrationxe2x80x99s own portal, Kremlin.ru is down, still unclear if the site is hacked by Anonymous.xc2xa0

The Russian Governmentxe2x80x99s portal, with all ministries,xc2xa0is running slow and is partly down.xc2xa0

Anonymous explains in itsxc2xa0Twitter feed that it is not the Russian people that are targeted.xc2xa0

xe2x80x9cWe want the Russian people to understand that we know itxe2x80x99s hard for them to speak out against their dictator for fear of reprisals.xe2x80x9d

The internet hacking group indicates it will ramp up the campaign against Putinxe2x80x99s regime, saying xe2x80x9cWe are convinced that sanctions against Putinxe2x80x99s criminal regime will have no effectxe2x80xa6#Anonymous will intensify cyber attacks on the Kremlin this afternoon (Moscow Times) #OpRussia.xe2x80x9d

It was Thursday this week Vladimir Putin launched a massive military attack on Ukraine.xc2xa0

Saturday morning, the Russian troops are reportedly in the outskirts of Kyiv but are met with strong resistance. Reports are coming in heavy fightings.