Russia Temporarily Disconnects AI Surveillance System Protecting Putin After US-Israeli Killing of Iran’s Leader

-Israeli killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, the Financial Times reported. S. and Israel launched a war on the Islamic Republic. Israeli intelligence used hours of video footage from Iran’s traffic cameras to identify the time and location of Khamenei’s meeting with an aide.

Ksenia Ermoshina, a senior researcher at the Center for Internet and Society of the CNRS, said the incident highlights the heightened security threat of AI video analysis for the Russian leadership. Russia began developing a “smart” camera system in 2015. Before that year, surveillance videos could be saved on memory cards and extracted for viewing.

In 2015, NTech Lab, founded by Rostech, became responsible for installing “smart” cameras that analyze images and send them to a server. NTech Lab began deploying AI-equipped cameras in Moscow in 2017. In 2023, Russia had 508,000 cameras equipped with artificial intelligence, including 216,000 in Moscow.

Seventy-four percent of public spaces in Moscow are equipped with “smart” cameras, and 90 percent of residential buildings have AI-equipped cameras. 2 million AI-equipped cameras.

Russian Minister of Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media Maksut Shadayev stated in 2025 that not every Russian city was yet equipped with AI cameras. Surveillance cameras in Russia are often hacked by both foreign actors and Russian citizen hackers.

Russian artist Helena Nikonole hacked into cameras at Russian voting stations and used their speakers to play the Ukrainian national anthem.

When Putin travels between cities, internet blackouts are implemented along his route. Ermoshina said that depending on political events, big celebrations, or military operations, internet shutdowns can be activated without any reason for one week, two weeks or more. The article was issued on 15/06/2026 at 08:24 and modified at 09:56.