The European Parliament’s website has been shut down following a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack claimed by Anonymous Russia, a member of the pro-Russian hacktivist group Killnet.

President of the European Parliament confirmed the incident saying that “computer experts in Parliament oppose it and protect our systems”.

Director-General for Communication and Spokesperson for the European Parliament, Jaume Dauch, also said after the website went down that the outage was caused by an ongoing DDoS attack.

“Availability of the Europarl_EN website is currently impacted externally due to high levels of traffic on the external network”, Dauche said.

“This traffic is related to a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack event. EP teams are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.”

The attack came after the European Parliament recognized Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and MPs called for further international isolation of Russia.

The resolution was adopted on Wednesday following recent developments in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

“Parliament calls on the European Union to further isolate Russia internationally, including with regard to Russia’s membership of international organizations and bodies such as the United Nations Security Council”, said declared a press release issued today reads.

MEPs also want diplomatic relations with Russia to be curtailed, EU contacts with Russian officials to be kept to an absolute minimum, and Russian state-affiliated institutions in the EU disseminating propaganda in the world are closed and prohibited.”

Pro-Kremlin hacktivist groups have targeted European and American websites since Russia invaded Ukraine. For example, Killnet recently claimed large-scale Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks targeting the websites of several major US airports last month.

Notable examples of airport websites being taken down following their attack include Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), which was intermittently offline, and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL ), a major American air traffic hub.

A week before, they attacked several US government websites in Colorado, Kentucky and Mississippi, with moderate success, managing to put some of them offline for a short time.

killnet too claims to have shot CISA Protected Critical Infrastructure Information Management System website after its attacks on the US Treasury in early October have been thwarted before having a real effect on the infrastructure of the agency.

They have also previously targeted countries that sided with Ukraine, including Romania and Italywhile the Legion “subgroup” attacked the key Norwegian and Lithuanian entities for similar reasons.

Earlier this month, the FBI said that coordinated DDoS attacks by pro-Russian hacktivists have minor impact on their targets as they attack public infrastructure like websites instead of actual services, resulting in limited disruption.