A New Front in the Digital War
Moscow has expanded its assault on Ukraine into cyberspace, striking multiple data centres and internet service providers in Kyiv this week in what looks like an effort to cripple the digital foundations of the country's economy. Ukraine's digital transformation ministry said roughly 100,000 households across Kyiv and nearby areas lost internet access temporarily following attacks on Wednesday and Thursday. Then on Friday a drone hit the central Kyiv offices of Datagroup, among Ukraine's biggest telecoms firms, leaving four people dead.[S1]
Ukraine's foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, posted on X that Moscow had struck key Ukrainian data centres in an effort to cut off the flow of information. Polish authorities said on Thursday that a Starlink satellite station in central Poland that serves Ukraine had been set alight, apparently part of a wider coordinated campaign against Ukrainian internet infrastructure. Local officials called it sabotage with links to Moscow. While Russia has hit Ukrainian data centres before, an operation of this magnitude is unprecedented.[S1]
Resilience Under Strain
Throughout the war, Ukraine's government has made maintaining connectivity a key objective, seeking ways to give mobile and internet operators sufficient backup power so they can keep running through long electricity cuts. The country's fairly decentralised internet architecture also means single strikes are less likely to knock out entire cities or regions for extended periods. Yet as winter nears, officials and industry figures worry that sustained Russian attacks could start to undermine the networks underpinning Ukraine's banks, payment systems and public services.[S1]
Serhii Sternenko, a well-known blogger and former government adviser, said on X that he advises people in Kyiv to start preparing for winter step by step, for instance by obtaining Starlink terminals or other ways to stay connected. He also said Moscow's aim is not merely to damage the capital's energy infrastructure but to wipe out every data centre and internet operator as well.[S1]
Wider Economic Pressure
These strikes form part of Russia's escalating campaign against Ukraine's economy, using missiles and newly developed jet-powered drones to hit warehouses, petrol stations, ports and other commercial sites, piling more strain on an economy already battered by almost five years of full-scale war. A warehouse belonging to the McDonald's fast food chain outside Kyiv was among Friday's targets. Heavy industry has suffered too, with strikes damaging industrial plants and steel output. According to a senior industry official, Ukraine produced no steel at all this month for the first time in a hundred years.[S1]
Ukraine is finding it hard to fend off an expanding wave of fast new Russian jet-powered drones such as the Geran-5, while its stock of Patriot missiles, needed to intercept Russian ballistic and cruise missiles, is running dangerously low. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters on Friday that Donald Trump had agreed to let Ukraine hold licences for producing Patriot air defence missiles, which could eventually allow Kyiv to build the vital systems at home, although experts caution that setting up such production might take years. Trump has repeatedly changed position on whether Ukraine may manufacture Patriots, and the US faces its own stock pressures from the Middle East conflict.[S1]
