Ukrainian hackers created fake accounts of attractive women in order to trick the Russian military into sending them photos revealing their positions, the Financial Times and Business Insider reported.

Mykyta Knish, a 30-year-old IT professional from Kharkiv, told the Financial Times that when Russia launched its invasion in late February, he wanted to use his hacking skills to help his country. He said he recruited more hackers and started a group called “Hackyourmom,” which now has 30 hackers from around the country.

He claims that last month, hackers managed to trick Russian soldiers in Melitopol into sending them photos of themselves at the front after they created fake accounts on social media and messaging services, including the popular Russian platform Telegram, and posed as beautiful women.

“They send the girls a lot of crap to prove they’re warriors,” says Knis.

Massive strikes on the base of the Russian military

After receiving the photos from the soldiers, the hackers were able to identify that they were taken at a Russian base near Melitopol in southern Ukraine. They passed this information on to the armed forces of Ukraine, who attacked the base a few days later.

“My first thought was – I am effective, I can help my country. Then I realized that I want to do more of this, find more bases, again and again,” Maksym, another member of the hacker group, told the FT.

It is unclear whether this particular attack was intended by the Ukrainian hackers, but in early July, Kyiv’s armed forces carried out a massive attack on Melitopol, striking a Russian base 30 times.

The Russian news agency RIA reported that Ukraine struck the Melitopol district, where the city’s airport is located, without specifying why.

Melitopol is also a hotbed of Ukrainian resistance, with families of Russian servicemen evacuated from the city in mid-August, days after guerrillas managed to blow up the headquarters of President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party.

Hackers, a constant headache for Moscow

Most recently, Ukrainian hackers and pirates managed to hijack the airwaves of Radio Crimea, the main radio station of Crimea, which broadcast the national anthem of Ukraine on the peninsula illegally occupied by Russia in 2014.

Since the first weeks of the “special military operation” ordered by Vladimir Putin in late February, hackers from Ukraine and other countries have also hacked Russian TV stations to show footage of Russian bombings of Ukrainian cities.

Hackers from Anonymous also hacked Russian television on May 9, when Russia was celebrating World War II Victory Day, to broadcast messages about the war in Ukraine.

Hackers changed the title of every program on Russian television to “The blood of thousands of Ukrainians and hundreds of their murdered children is on your hands. Televisions and the government lie. No war.”

Since the end of March, Russia has accused itself of being the victim of “unprecedented” cyber attacks.

Follow the latest events of the 195th day of the war in Ukraine LIVETEXT on HOTNEWS.RO.