A major hack of Russian state TV left millions of viewers watching a video put together by Ukraine’s defence ministry.

The footage showed attacks by Ukrainian forces on Russian troops before images of Swan Lake appeared on screen.

The ballet was played on repeat during the attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev during the fall of the Soviet Union.

It culminated with a message in Ukrainian, accompanied by the crest of its defence ministry, warning: ‘The hour of reckoning has come.’

The hack hit mainstream state TV channels in multiple time zones across the Urals and Siberia.

The message featured a clip of Swan Lake (Picture: Social media/east2west news)

It ended with the warning ‘the hour of reckoning has come’ (Picture: Social media/east2west news)

Among the television stations hit were the largest in Russia, Channel One, and Zvezda, which embarrassingly is owned by the Russian defence ministry.

It also hit Ren TV, a channel owned by a media conglomerate headed by dictator Vladimir Putin’s long-rumoured lover Alina Kabaeva.

An earlier hack in June hit Krasnoyarsk and Tyumen regions in Siberia, plus Kursk and Kaliningrad in European Russia.

At the time, Russian officials vowed action to stop it happening again.

The footage showed attacks by Ukrainian forces on Russian troops before images of Swan Lake appeared on screen.