Russia shut down Putin surveillance system after Israel hacked CCTVs in Iran: Report

Russian security forces reportedly shut down parts of a special surveillance system that protects Russian President Vladimir Putin and his close aides. This move came after Israeli forces were able to hack into Tehran's CCTVs and locate Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In Short

• Russia partially shuts down Putin surveillance systems
• Report says this happened after Israel hacked into CCTVs in Iran
• Russia turned the system back on only after it was able to seal it off from the internet

On February 28, 2026, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was assassinated in a joint strike by the US and Israel. Israeli intelligence is said to have hacked into CCTV cameras in Tehran to track senior officials, including Khamenei, which allowed them to pinpoint his exact location. The manner in which CCTV cameras were used to locate Khamenei has reportedly raised concerns in Russia. Russian security services are said to have shut down parts of a special surveillance system used to protect President Vladimir Putin and his closest aides, following the assassination of the Iranian leader.

As per a report from the Financial Times, the system protecting Putin is separate from roughly 3,00,000 surveillance cameras in Moscow that are used to monitor citizens. It was turned back on only after engineers examined it and tried to seal it off from the internet. Though it is unclear when the entire system was actually turned back on.

Why did Russia shut down surveillance systems?

According to the report, the move reflected growing concern in Moscow that advances in AI. Now intelligence agencies can use AI to go through millions of hours of video footage from thousands of cameras to identify patterns of behaviour and pinpoint the movements of high-value targets with far greater speed and accuracy than before.

Israel was able to use AI systems to go through footage from Iranian CCTVs and identify patterns that potentially allowed it to track Khamanei’s movements.

Russian intelligence agency FSB’s chief, Alexander Bortnikov, warned regional security officials last week that Russia’s own surveillance apparatus had become a vulnerability. According to Russian state news agencies, he said on May 26, “The recent elimination of senior Iranian officials by the US-Israel alliance is a clear warning sign. The victims’ locations were identified, in part, through software ‘backdoors’ in Tehran’s video surveillance systems.”

Ukraine can hack CCTVs in Moscow

Russian officials were reportedly already worried about Putin’s personal safety, especially because Ukrainian intelligence services have penetrated traffic camera systems in Russia.

The report states that mobile phone location data has also been used in attacks on senior Russian military officials in Moscow. An independent Ukrainian hacker told the Financial Times that cameras in Moscow, including around the Kremlin, “are still working and regularly hacked.” Though he declined to say whether Ukraine could analyse the footage at scale.

The report also said the US and the UK, which have access to similar tools, have previously given Ukraine precise targeting intelligence, including information based on high-resolution images from surveillance drones.

Keep in mind that CCTVs were believed to be vulnerable in the past as well. But the advancements made with AI simply make it far quicker and easier to analyse footage on a massive scale, without requiring hundreds or thousands of humans.

Newer AI systems can reportedly go far beyond facial recognition, gun detection or vehicle tracking by number plate or make. Instead of being limited to a few preset searches, they allow natural-language queries across huge volumes of video. The report claimed that now officers can search for things such as two men handing a bag to each other, a person who has changed their appearance or clothes several times in a day, or a vehicle that appears to have been repainted or has passed the same point several times in a short period.

The report said that once a subject is identified, such systems can quickly build detailed dossiers of movements and contacts over months. They can combine CCTV material with social media, hacked communications, audio from microphones in smart devices and travel histories.

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