Russian drones damage head office of Ukraine's Kyivstar mobile operator
A Russian drone attack on 27 September damaged the head office building of Kyivstar, Ukraine's mobile telecommunications operator, though all staff remained safe.
Russian forces damaged the head office building of Kyivstar, Ukraine's mobile telecommunications operator, in a drone attack on 27 September, according to Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne, citing the company's press service. Kyivstar said all employees are safe and that it is assessing the damage while coordinating its next steps.
Pattern of strikes on telecom infrastructure
This is not the first time Kyivstar facilities have been targeted. On 17 September, a Russian strike hit a building in Kyiv Oblast housing Kyivstar equipment, though no one was injured that time.
Over the past two weeks, Russian attacks have repeatedly hit data centres and internet providers in Kyiv. On 23 September, a strike damaged a data centre holding core equipment for internet provider Utels and disrupted the Fex.net cloud service. The following day, after further attacks on Kyiv data centres, providers Domonet, Kievnet and Faust reported infrastructure damage and internet outages. That same day, a data centre housing infrastructure of hosting provider MiroHost was destroyed, leaving the company unable to say when service would resume.
On 25 September, a data centre run by provider Datagroup was also damaged. The disruptions forced TV channel Novyny.LIVE to briefly suspend broadcasts, while state-owned military channel Armiia TV halted operations following the strikes on data centres.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that during a meeting of the Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, decisions were made to strengthen protection of data centres and other critical communications infrastructure.
