Twitter hack prematurely kills Mikhail Gorbachev
Government (Foreign) // Media // Social Media
When pranksters reported the former Soviet leader’s demise, he surfaced to deny the rumors:
“I’m alive and well,” Gorbachev, late Aug. 7, told the website of Novaya Gazeta newspaper, using a blanked-out Russian expletive to describe his ill-wishers who he said were “hoping in vain”.
The retort came after two Twitter accounts of the RIA Novosti state news agency posted news of his death. RIA Novosti said that the Twitter accounts of its press center and its German language news service were hacked into and that the false reports were online for only five minutes before the agency removed them.
The erroneous Tweet said that “Mikhail Gorbachev has died in the Shoko cafe in Yekaterinburg.”
It added, writes AFP, that “Gorbachev died as he was talking to a maverick politician, Yevgeny Roizman, who is standing for mayor of the Siberian city, suggesting a political motive for the message.”
The alive and kicking Gorbachev stated that he suspected the hackers were “carrying out the orders of some authorities.”
RIA Novosti said it would ask the FSB security service and prosecutors to investigate the incident.