Russia’s Digital Communications Ministry has claimed that the recent global IT outage has not affected Russian airlines and banks due to the country’s countermeasures against Western sanctions.
According to a statement from the ministry, “Russian airports have not reported any system failures. The situation with Microsoft once again highlights the importance of import substitution of foreign software.”
This refers to Russia’s practice of replacing foreign imports with Russian-made alternatives. Putin’s annexation of Crimea led to a wave of Western sanctions, triggering the “import substitution” program in a bid to reduce dependence on foreign suppliers.
However, analysts outside the Russian government state that import substitution has largely failed because Russia lacks the capacity to produce equivalent goods. The program has led to a ballooning of production costs, with prices increased by up to 700% in two key industries.
Russia’s dependence on modern technology has made import substitution even more challenging, given the nation’s weak performance in high-tech sectors.
The claims of the Digital Communications Ministry may be correct, as the country apparently separated itself from the global electronic system on Microsoft Windows. A faulty software update sent by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike disrupted thousands of computers worldwide, causing catastrophic failures and grounding financial and transport systems.
Cybersecurity expert Troy Hunt described the incident as the largest IT outage in history, saying this is what the world was worried about during Y2K, but it has actually happened. Russell computers, which tend to lag far behind in updates due to sanctions, tend to be less affected by the global software issues.
Russian IT specialists claimed their computers will not be much impacted by the outage, as they have been transitioning to alternative software for two years and have reduced their connection to Microsoft cloud services.
