Russia targets Ukraine's digital nerve centres as war reaches data infrastructure

Four people were killed in a Russian drone strike on a business centre in Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said

Russia is expanding its strikes on Ukraine's critical infrastructure to include data centres and telecommunications facilities, disrupting internet services for around 100,000 households in Kyiv and the surrounding region.According to the BBC, citing Ukrainian officials, Russian strikes damaged data centres operated by internet providers in Kyiv. On Friday, a Russian drone hit the Inkom business centre in the capital, which housed a Datagroup data centre, killing four people and damaging the facility. Datagroup said its services continued to operate from backup sites.Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia had widened its attacks to target Ukraine's data centres and internet providers, seeking to cause maximum disruption to ordinary people."All this affects people's ability to stay connected, study, work," Zelenskyy said, arguing that the attacks were increasingly affecting essential aspects of daily life.Russia, however, said it had targeted the data centre because it was being used by Ukrainian military intelligence. The Russian defence ministry confirmed the strike on the Datagroup facility and said its forces had also targeted other data-processing and telecommunications centres in Ukraine, including New-Telco, United DC, Kyivstar and Parkovyi.

The attacks come alongside continued Russian strikes on Ukraine's energy and railway infrastructure, widening the focus of the war to the digital systems that support civilian life and essential services.Importance of data centres for military operationsData and computing infrastructure have become increasingly important to modern military operations.Center for Strategic and International Studies said modern military operations are increasingly dependent on data and require large amounts of computing power, rapid access to information and the ability to integrate data across systems.CSIS said Ukraine is fighting a data-driven, AI-enabled war in which the strategic migration of data to cloud locations inside and outside the country has helped maintain its operational resilience.CSIS has also documented how Ukraine's military uses digital systems to collect, process and analyse battlefield information. Its Delta situational-awareness system, gathers data from multiple sources and processes it through cloud infrastructure to provide commanders with a real-time operational picture, supporting battlefield decision-making and command and control.CSIS reported that Ukraine moved significant parts of its digital infrastructure to public cloud systems and data centres outside the country, helping it maintain government and digital services despite Russian cyber and physical attacks.