Russia hit Kyivstar’s infrastructure eight times in ten days

Kyivstar, Ukraine’s largest mobile operator, has taken eight Russian strikes on its facilities over the past ten days, company president Oleksandr Komarov said at the Forbes CEO Summit in Kyiv on October 1. The attacks did serious damage on the technology side but had no impact on subscribers, Interfax-Ukraine reports.

The operator’s data centers took the hardest hit. One was knocked out completely, while at the second Kyivstar is shifting workloads and working to contain the fallout. Two Russian missiles also struck the company’s central warehouse.

Kyivstar had partly prepared for a strike on the warehouse. It cut the usual equipment stock there in half ahead of time, to $15 million. According to Komarov, that equipment reserve and measures taken in advance kept subscribers from feeling the attacks. None of the company’s staff were injured.

Despite the losses, Komarov said the company is focused on moving forward rather than on survival. Kyivstar has already restored one data center and is working on the second. He doesn’t expect a smooth recovery, though — it could be two steps forward and one step back, or the other way around. Everything the company has done in recent years, he added, was aimed at one thing: making the buffer between a crisis and the destruction of its infrastructure as wide as possible.

Days before Komarov’s speech, on September 27, a Russian strike damaged the building that houses Kyivstar’s headquarters on Dehtiarivska Street in Kyiv. No employees were hurt in that attack either.