Strikes on Kyiv data centers disrupt internet and TV broadcasts

What happened

On the morning of September 26 a Russian strike hit the Kyiv data centre of telecoms operator Cosmonova, and it was attacked again later that day. The company said all staff were safe, but the second strike disrupted services and damaged its backbone network. State Emergency Service crews were at the scene, Cosmonova’s engineers were waiting for access to assess the damage, and some customers could experience internet outages.

By the evening the company had conceded that the facility was lost. “Unfortunately, the data centre will no longer operate,” Cosmonova wrote, posting photos of the destruction. According to Ukrinform, work continues to contain the damage and to partly move and restore services. The company promised to share details about client equipment housed there when possible. Access to the site has been partly restricted by the relevant services, even for Cosmonova’s own specialists.

Not just Cosmonova

The same morning, Kyiv internet provider Kolo.TV was hit for the third time. “We have a third hit this morning. We are already deploying backups and rerouting. This time the situation is much more difficult,” the company said. Its chats, website and phone lines were temporarily down.

A day earlier, on September 25, a daytime drone strike on an office building in Kyiv’s Solomianskyi district damaged a data centre run by DataGroup, hromadske reported. No employees were hurt; the company said customer data was secure and services were running from backup facilities.

These strikes continued a series that began earlier in the week. After the attack on September 23, around 100,000 households in Kyiv and the surrounding region had internet problems, according to Digital Transformation Ministry figures cited by the Kyiv Independent, and several providers and hosting firms reported damage.

Impact on television

The strikes also affected broadcasters. The “We Are Ukraine+” channel went temporarily off air after the attack on Cosmonova’s infrastructure, blaming “systematic strikes on data centres, telecoms infrastructure and national broadcasters”. Novyny.LIVE’s TV signal also dropped during the day, although its website, Telegram, YouTube and other digital platforms stayed online; the company called the interruption temporary.

The government’s response

On September 25 President Volodymyr Zelensky chaired a meeting of the Stavka, the supreme command. According to the National Security and Defence Council, it adopted additional decisions to protect data centres and other critical communications facilities and keep them running. “These decisions must be fully implemented at all levels, and this is the personal responsibility of government officials and the heads of the security services,” Zelensky wrote. The specific measures were not made public.

How providers protect themselves

Anatolii Frolenkov of the 1-IX internet exchange point told the Kyiv Independent that since September Russia has begun taking this infrastructure out “systematically”. Providers can limit the damage by duplicating equipment, keeping backup routes and spreading infrastructure across locations, including abroad. But that is expensive, he said, and many companies lack sufficient backups.

Why it matters

Data centres house the equipment of internet providers, hosting firms and broadcasters. When one goes down, thousands of users and several companies feel it at once. This week showed that some operators manage to switch to backups, as DataGroup did, while others lose their infrastructure entirely, as Cosmonova has.