As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth year, Moscow has expanded its military campaign to systematically target Ukraine’s digital and civilian critical infrastructure, leaving four dead after a recent drone strike on a Kyiv business hub and triggering widespread connectivity disruptions across the country.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that Friday’s strike on the Inkom business center in central Kyiv killed four civilians and damaged a data facility operated by Ukrainian internet provider Datagroup. Within hours of the attack, Russia’s defense ministry issued a formal statement confirming it had targeted the site, claiming the data center was being utilized by Ukraine’s military intelligence wing for operational purposes. Independent verification by the BBC has confirmed visual footage of the severe damage to the multi-story business building that housed Datagroup’s operations.
The strike is part of a broader, coordinated Russian effort to disable Ukraine’s digital ecosystem, a campaign that Zelenskyy says is designed to inflict maximum disruption on the daily lives of ordinary Ukrainian citizens. “All this affects people’s ability to stay connected, study, work,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post Friday. “The Russians are constantly expanding their escalation operation: American and other businesses, data centres, internet providers – for Russia, all ordinary life is simply a target. It is important that the world responds to all of this and that Russia feels the response to its terror.”
Connectivity disruptions have already rippled across Ukraine following a wave of earlier strikes earlier this week. Roughly 100,000 households across Kyiv and the surrounding region were left without internet access after Russian strikes on Wednesday, with multiple private companies already beginning the process of transferring sensitive data from damaged onshore servers to secure offshore facilities to avoid total data loss. Even in cities hundreds of kilometers from Kyiv, the impact of the digital infrastructure attacks was felt: in the northwestern city of Lutsk, all electronic public transport information boards went dark on Friday after the strike knocked out core data services the system relies on. Local city officials directly attributed the outage to damage from the Kyiv attack.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha emphasized that Russia’s targeting of data centers goes beyond disrupting everyday life, threatening systems that save lives. “Rapid alerts about missile and drone threats are essential – they save lives. This is critical civilian infrastructure… It is not a military target. It is essential to keeping everyday life functioning,” he said Wednesday.
While Ukrainian defense technology advisor Serhii Beskrestnov acknowledged that local connectivity disruptions are likely to continue and that consumer internet costs may rise to cover repair and rebuilding expenses, he sought to reassure the public that a total nationwide blackout of internet services is not possible. Beskrestnov stressed that Ukraine’s digital network was built with a highly decentralized architecture, meaning that even with targeted strikes on major facilities, the country “will not be left without internet access.” Datagroup also moved quickly to limit service disruption, confirming that all of its offerings continue to operate via preconfigured backup infrastructure while technical teams assess the full extent of the damage from Friday’s strike. Russia’s defense ministry added that it has targeted a range of other major digital and telecommunications facilities across Ukraine in recent days, including facilities operated by New-Telco, United DC, Kyivstar and Parkovyi.
The shift to targeting digital infrastructure comes as Russia has already ramped up strikes on other critical civilian systems ahead of the approaching winter months, including energy generation facilities and railway lines, in a bid to break Ukrainian public resilience. Ukraine has responded with its own long-range strikes targeting Russian oil refineries and military logistics hubs, arguing that these sites support Russia’s war financing and operational capacity.
The escalation of Russian attacks on infrastructure connected to Ukraine has spilled beyond Ukraine’s borders, raising new alarm among NATO member states about potential hybrid attacks targeting European infrastructure. In a separate development Friday, Polish prosecutors announced they had opened a formal investigation into an arson attack on a Starlink satellite internet station in the Polish village of Wola Krobowska that occurred on Wednesday. The station is part of a network that routes internet connectivity from Europe to Ukraine, using SpaceX’s Starlink satellite systems that have become a critical communication lifeline for Ukraine throughout the war. Poland’s national prosecutor’s office said there is reasonable suspicion that the perpetrators carried out the attack on the orders of Russian intelligence services; Moscow has not yet issued any comment on the allegation.
In recent weeks, multiple NATO countries have issued warnings that Russia is preparing to launch a series of hybrid attacks on critical infrastructure in European allied states to test Western commitment to supporting Ukraine, claims Moscow has repeatedly denied. Earlier this month, German authorities blamed Russian actors for an attempted drone attack on Leipzig/Halle Airport, while French authorities have ordered a sweeping national plan to harden security for critical infrastructure and defense industry sites across the country.