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Either the Russian Prime Minister hates Putin or his Twitter account was hacked

Either the Russian Prime Minister hates Putin or his Twitter account was hacked

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Dmitry Medvedev tweeted that he was 'ashamed of the actions of the government'

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The Russian-language Twitter account of the Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, was apparently hacked today. The official account, verified and followed by 2.5 million people, posted a tweet in Russian at 2:21 AM ET that read " I am resigning. Ashamed of the actions of the government. I'm sorry."

medvedev-hack-tweet

The tweet was followed by a series of 140-character criticisms of the Russian regime, in addition to retweets from prominent anti-Putin journalists, writers, and thinkers. One of the tweets, now deleted, read "I like reading @Navalny" in English — a reference to the Yale-educated lawyer and activist Alexei Navalny. The Wall Street Journal has called Navalny "the man Vladimir Putin fears most."

Around 40 minutes after the first tweets appeared from the hacker, they were deleted. It's not yet clear who was behind the apparent breach.

Update August 14th, 3:05AM: The hacker's tweets have now been deleted. This story has been updated to reflect this information.