An unusual tender was announced on Russia's official public procurement site Thursday morning.
In what turned out to be the handiwork of hackers, an entity identified as the “administration of Mikhaylovskoye municipality” put a property management contract up for bid that would allow the winner to “rule the [Russian] state and turn a profit” from doing so.
The property was described as “the whole of the Russian Federation, including Crimea and Sevastopol, a population of 146 million, lots of oil, gas, forests, land and whatnot.”
The starting bid was set at $1 trillion.
The tender description also stated that the object came burdened with “a few million officials who also believe they have the right to turn a profit from the Russian Federation.”
A document attached to the page of the bid stated the website had been hacked by a group identified as the Ural Cyber Partisans.
"Selling government positions via tender is much more honest then conducting elections with predictable results," the hackers declared in the statement.
By the time of publication, the bid remained available on the government website.
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