Hackers have broken into Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's Twitter account, tweeting his resignation and criticising President Vladimir Putin.
"I'm resigning. I'm ashamed of the government's actions. Forgive me," said Medvedev's Russian-language Twitter account.
"I've wanted to say this for a long time: Vova you're wrong!" said another tweet, using the nickname for Vladimir.
Medvedev, even when he served as president, was considered the second fiddle to Putin.
Medvedev's "Twitter account has been hacked, the messages are not genuine. We're working on the problem," a government spokesman told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.
However, hacked messages continued to appear, and his account quickly became the top trender in Moscow, with the number of followers of his account swiftly rising by 10,000 to more than 2.5 million.
Many of the hacked tweets criticised Russian government policies.
"Crimea isn't ours. Please retweet," said a message as Medvedev, Putin and lawmakers were set to meet on Thursday to discuss problems on the Black Sea peninsula since Russia annexed it from Ukraine in March.
"We could return to the 1980s. That is sad. If that is the objective of my colleagues in the Kremlin, they'll achieve that quickly," said another.
