Russia’s Digital Communications Ministry said Friday that airlines and banks in the country did not appear to have been impacted by a widespread Microsoft outage that has disrupted flights and business across the globe, touting Moscow’s measures against Western sanctions as a shield from the digital disarray.
The international travel industry, as well as some television broadcasters, banks and healthcare systems were knocked offline in the United States, Australia, Europe and Asia on Friday morning. The Australian government linked the outages to the global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, which Reuters reported had alerted its clients that its software was causing Microsoft Windows to crash.
Microsoft said it was taking “mitigation actions” in response to service issues, though it was not immediately clear if those were linked to the global outages.
“At the moment, the ministry has not received reports of system failures at Russian airports,” Russia’s Digital Communications Ministry said in a statement circulated by the state-run news agency TASS.
Russia’s federal aviation authority Rosaviatsia confirmed that no domestic airline has been impacted by the global outage.
“The situation with Microsoft once again shows the importance of import substitution of foreign software, primarily at critical information infrastructure facilities,” the Digital Communications Ministry said.
Russia has worked to substitute imports of foreign goods in key sectors of the economy since 2014, when its relations with the West began deteriorating over the annexation of Crimea and support of separatists in eastern Ukraine.
The Kremlin said on Friday that its systems were working as normal and had not been impacted by the Microsoft outage.
Microsoft announced it would suspend new sales and scale down operations in Russia soon after the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
