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Web sites belonging to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in Belarus, Kosovo, Azerbaijan and other former Soviet bloc countries sustained what they characterized as severe cyberattacks for two days beginning April 26. According to reports, access to eight RFE/RL Web sites was affected, with several being shut down completely. The date of the attacks is important for a few reasons — not the least of which is that it was the date for a rally marking the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, and the one-year anniversary of cyberattacks on Estonian Web sites.

RFE/RL said its Belarus service was the first to be hit, on the same day that the service planned to cover a rally in Minsk organized by the country’s opposition to honor the 22nd anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Within a few hours, Web sites run by RFE/RL in other countries reported similar distributed denial of service attacks, which flood a Web site with requests that it is unable to handle.