The New Times is fined by state agency on same day it publishes information about president’s daughter Maria

Russia’s New Times magazine has been hit with a state fine and a hacker attack on the day it published an investigation of president Vladimir Putin’s daughter.

The state communications oversight agency on Monday issued a warning and a fine to the magazine, which was founded in 1943 and has been critical of the Kremlin in recent years, for an article in the January issue that mentioned the Ukrainian ultranationalist group Right Sector without noting that it is banned in Russia, RBC newspaper reported. A publication can be shut down if it receives two warnings in 12 months.

But the penalty against New Times came the same day it published new information about Putin’s older daughter, Maria. After the magazine’s website also went down for several hours on Monday, editor Yevgeniya Albats told RBC she believed a distributed denial-of-service attack was the cause.

The Kremlin has long been suspected of wielding cyber-attacks against political opponents and critical websites. Albats said New Times last suffered such an attack after an interview with Putin foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2013.

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Discussing Putin’s private life has long been taboo in Russia, but publications have recently begun to draw back the veil of secrecy, finding that his two daughters and their associates have enjoyed speedy success in politics and business along with other children of the Kremlin elite.

Moscow State University official Katerina Tikhonova, 29, was outed as the president’s younger daughter last year and found to have corporate holdings worth more than £1.3bn with her partner Kirill Shamalov.

Using property and academic records and testimony from building employees, New Times found that Putin’s older daughter Maria, 30, lives in a well-guarded flat block near the American embassy in Moscow and is a graduate student at an endocrine centre run by the health ministry.

Her academic advisor Ivan Dedov received a state honour from Putin in orders published on Monday, and his son was recently appointed a judge from Russia at the European court of human rights.

Maria enjoys travel and as a student toured the Mediterranean in a mega-yacht with friends, New Times reported. Putin was accused of corruption last month by US officials, drawing an angry response from the Kremlin that threatened to further strain relations.