Will Ukraine lose the internet? Adviser says a nationwide blackout is unlikely

In short

Russia is attacking Ukraine’s information and network infrastructure, but the country as a whole will not be cut off from the internet. That is the assessment of Serhii Beskrestnov, known by his call sign “Flash”, a technology expert and freelance adviser to the president on technology, in a Facebook post. People in the industry share that view.

What happened this week

During the Russian attack on Kyiv on September 23, two people were killed and 43 injured, according to Ukrinform. Data centres were among the targets. Ukraine’s Digital Transformation Ministry said about 100,000 households in Kyiv and the surrounding region had internet problems afterwards, hromadske reported.

The Kyiv Independent listed the providers affected. UTELS said a Kyiv data centre housing its core equipment was damaged and lost power. Pavutyna said one of its data centres was hit. Crazy Network said a strike damaged a central traffic exchange in Kyiv, disrupting internet and phone services in the capital as well as in the Vinnytsia and Khmelnytskyi regions.

On September 24, Kyiv provider Etherlink said its main network node had been damaged, knocking some customers offline and forcing it to move the core of its network. Hosting company MiroHost lost the Ukrainian data centre that housed its infrastructure, although 90–95% of its customers use servers abroad and were unaffected. CityHost also reported equipment destroyed at a Kyiv data centre.

Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed strikes on two Kyiv data centres, New-Telco and United DC, alleging they served Ukraine’s defence and security agencies. Those claims could not be independently verified. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha rejected them, calling the sites critical civilian infrastructure that lets people receive life-saving information, including rapid missile and drone alerts, and “not a military target”.

Why a total blackout is unlikely

According to Beskrestnov, Ukraine’s internet channels are highly distributed, so neither whole regions nor cities will be left offline. Attacks may cause local outages, but in his view providers are able to fix them quickly.

Anatolii Frolenkov of the 1-IX internet exchange point told the Kyiv Independent that since September Russia has begun taking this infrastructure out “systematically”. Even so, he said, knocking out internet access across Ukraine would be extremely difficult. “The internet will not disappear completely. There will be outages, there will be problems… operators may go down for a couple of hours because the infrastructure is being physically destroyed,” he said.

Providers can limit the damage from individual strikes by duplicating equipment, keeping backup routes and spreading infrastructure across locations, including abroad. But that is expensive, and many companies lack sufficient backups, Frolenkov noted.

What it means for users

Beskrestnov suggested that internet prices could indeed rise as providers try to cover the cost of repairing damaged infrastructure. He urged people not to fall for information attacks or panic over reports of a possible blackout, recalling that people were earlier warned there would be no food or fuel, and now it is the internet.

Background

Attacks on communications are not new. The Kyiv Independent recalls that a key Kyiv data centre was damaged in a Russian strike on July 2, and Kyivstar’s infrastructure was hit in separate attacks in September. So far the strikes have caused significant but scattered outages rather than a nationwide blackout.