A pro-Kremlin group of hackers claimed responsibility for an attack on the European Parliament website after its members voted to call Russia “a state sponsor of terrorism”, Roberta Metsola, the president of the EP announced.

“The European Parliament is under a sophisticated cyberattack. A pro-Kremlin group has claimed responsibility,” Roberta Metsola said in a tweet.

The @Europarl_EN is under a sophisticated cyberattack. A pro-Kremlin group has claimed responsibility.

Our IT experts are pushing back against it & protecting our systems.

This, after we proclaimed Russia as a State-sponsor of terrorism.

My response: #SlavaUkraini

— Roberta Metsola (@EP_President) November 23, 2022

“Our IT experts are pushing back against it & protecting our systems. This, after we proclaimed Russia as a State-sponsor of terrorism. My response: SlavaUkraini (glory to Ukraine)”, Metsola said.

Earlier today members of the European Parliament voted to declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, saying that Moscow’s military strikes on civilian and critical infrastructure targets such as power plants, hospitals, schools and shelters extensively violate international law and human rights.

The decision was a symbol of condemnation for Russia, as the European Union has no sanction mechanisms it can use against the aggressor. The European Union and other European countries associated with the bloc have already been imposing huge sanctions on Russia over its invasion and inhumane conduct of Ukraine.

?The availability of @Europarl_EN website is currently impacted from outside due to high levels of external network traffic.
This traffic is related to a DDOS attack (Distributed Denial of Service) event.
EP teams are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.

— Jaume Duch (@jduch) November 23, 2022

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks work by directing high volumes of internet traffic towards targeted servers in a relatively unsophisticated bid by so-called “hacktivists” to knock them offline, Reuters explains.