U.S. federal prosecutors have filed charges against three Russian citizens for operating bulletproof hosting services that aided ransomware groups and led to damages exceeding 62 million dollars for victims across the world.

Bulletproof hosting firms rent out servers designed to resist takedown attempts and support illegal actions such as malware distribution, command and control servers, phishing campaigns, and storage of prohibited material. These providers promote their resilience by disregarding complaints from victims and requests from law enforcement agencies.

The two services in question, Media Land and ML.Cloud, supplied customers with servers located in several nations beyond Russia, among them China, Finland, the Netherlands, and the United States.

An indictment made public on Tuesday identifies Aleksandr Volosovik, known online as Yalishanda, as the owner of Media Land. Yulia Pankova managed ML.Cloud and handled its legal and financial affairs, while Kirill Zatolokin processed payments from clients.

The U.S. Department of State has offered a reward of up to 10 million dollars via its Rewards for Justice program for details concerning foreign government ties to these individuals, their cyber operations, or state linked use of the companies.

The Rewards for Justice account noted the announcement on July 14, 2026.

The United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia had already imposed sanctions on the three defendants and the two firms last November for supplying infrastructure and technical assistance to ransomware and cybercrime groups including Lockbit, Blacksuit, and Play.

The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control noted then that Media Land servers had been employed in distributed denial of service attacks on U.S. firms and critical systems such as telecommunications networks.

United States Attorney David M. Toepfer stated that victims extend beyond Ohio to include entities in 20 additional states, affecting banks, schools, government offices, hospitals, and media outlets.

He added that authorities and their global partners will pursue those who operate from behind screens anywhere to profit from and damage community support systems.

This week the Council of the European Union also placed sanctions on Media Land, ML.Cloud, and Alexander Volosovik in the first coordinated cyber sanctions effort against Russia alongside the United Kingdom.