Russia – Mikhail Gorbachev announced to the world he was alive and well after hackers broke into microblogs run by a news agency late on Wednesday and posted false reports of his death.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
“I’m alive and well. I understand that some people are trying to use their sites to catch people’s attention or are fulfilling the orders of some authority or another,” the former Soviet president, 82, said in a statement on newspaper Novaya Gazeta’s website.
He said the hackers had been “hoping in vain”, and used a Russian profanity to describe them.
Gorbachev is disliked by many Russians for what they see as his role in the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was followed by political and economic chaos in the 1990s.
The state-run RIA news agency removed the bogus posts from its Twitter blogs within minutes and said it had launched an internal investigation and requested an investigation by the Federal Security Service.
The spokesman for the last president of the Soviet Union said in June Gorbachev had been taken to hospital for tests. Rumors about his health spread online.
Gorbachev has maintained his interest in politics and criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin last year.
The hacked sites included Twitter accounts of RIA’s German-language service and its International Multimedia Press Center.
I don’t believe him. You can’t trust the guy.
#1 , You stole my line. (But actually he was a good guy, and got rid of communism.)
How does he know?
The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated….
-twain
Some narcissistic jerk the other day seemed to start a unholy blasphemy that Mr. Ariel Sharon had died. My “palestinian” neighbor told me he heard it on either Al Jazeera or the BBC. I do not think he was creating the story himself. I actually thought B’DE and I am very unhappy to see this garbage being spread in hopes to ruin the dignity and hope of a prayerful hope. I never saw another story on line. When will the holocaust against human suffering end? I hope they pay for their unelectable death words.
Pity! He is an unrepentant communist and the only good communist is a dead communist.
Gorby was probably the bravest man of the 20th century. He ended communism in the USSR, freed millions in the eastern bloc, ended the Cold War (Ronnie slept thru that) and has been a vocal opponent of Czar Putin. Hail Gorby!