--- title: "Kyiv’s Data Centres Under Fire: Russia’s Jet Drones Find the Gaps in the Sky" description: "Since September 23, strikes on servers and mobile networks have cut thousands off, and the faster drones are harder to stop" author: "Jan Sokol" published: 2026-10-05T17:21:11Z modified: 2026-10-05T22:21:03Z url: https://rews.cc/a/kyiv-s-data-centres-under-fire-russia-s-jet-drones-find-the--8cd890 language: en tags: ["war", "infrastructure", "cybersecurity", "drones", "ukraine", "europe", "world"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # Kyiv’s Data Centres Under Fire: Russia’s Jet Drones Find the Gaps in the Sky *Since September 23, strikes on servers and mobile networks have cut thousands off, and the faster drones are harder to stop* By Jan Sokol · October 5, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/kyiv-s-data-centres-under-fire-russia-s-jet-drones-find-the--8cd890 ## In brief - Russia has concentrated strikes on Kyiv data centres and telecom networks since September 23, according to Reporters Without Borders - Initial strikes cut internet for about 100,000 households in the Kyiv region, per Ukraine’s digital ministry; RSF says nearly 100,000 people - Providers hit include COSMONOVA|NET, Kyivstar’s headquarters and, by Russia’s account, a Vodafone Ukraine data centre - ACLED and ISW describe a concentrated campaign against Ukraine’s digital infrastructure that follows strikes on ports and railways - Zelenskyy says air defences stop over 85% of standard Shaheds but only 50–60% of the faster jet-powered versions Wars used to be read in a fixed order: first the bridges, then the railway junctions, then the power stations. Whoever held the junction held the province. In Kyiv this autumn the list has a new line. It covers buildings that few residents have ever entered and fewer could find on a map. Inside them are the servers that carry the country’s bank transfers, its news broadcasts, its mobile calls and the air-raid warnings people depend on to know when to run. Since September 23, according to \[Reporters Without Borders\](\), Russia has concentrated its strikes on the data centres and telecommunication networks of the Ukrainian capital. Ars Technica reports that the strikes are increasingly carried out by jet-powered drones. The result, in plain terms, is that thousands of people have repeatedly lost their phone and internet service. ## Names on the list The first night set the pattern. Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation said internet service failed for a time in 100,000 households in the Kyiv region, Ars Technica reported. Reporters Without Borders, citing the same ministry, gives the figure as nearly 100,000 people in Kyiv on 23 September. Households or people, the order of magnitude is the same, and the campaign has since grown. The names that followed belong to companies, which is what this kind of war produces. On 25 September, according to RSF, the telecom and IT provider COSMONOVA|NET warned customers about outages after a strike on its Kyiv facility. The next day it was hit again and announced that it was “offline”. The data-monitoring group ACLED says the repeated strikes of September 26 forced the company to shut down. The public broadcaster *Suspilne* told RSF that several video players on its website were “temporarily unavailable” after those strikes, and later that “most of the resources and functions affected by the strike have already been restored”. On September 27, \[Reuters reported\](\) that Russia hit the headquarters of Kyivstar, the country’s largest mobile operator. Russia’s defence ministry said it had struck a data centre belonging to Vodafone Ukraine, the second-largest. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a data centre in Kyiv was hit twice that morning, wounding two children and an adult. The next day the attacks reached Dnipro: a strike on the office of Opendatabot, a Ukrainian analytics and monitoring company, damaged its physical infrastructure, though the company says its services kept running, \[according to ACLED\](\). Tetiana Gaviuk, ACLED’s analyst for Europe, wrote on October 1 that the pattern itself is new, even though the targets are not: > “Russian attacks on Ukraine’s telecommunication infrastructure are not new, with strikes and shelling previously damaging fiber optic lines, cell towers, and facilities belonging to mobile network companies. However, the recent concentrated attacks on Kyiv’s data centers and telecom networks stand out because multiple providers and facilities were hit within days, indicating Russia’s increased pressure on Ukraine’s digital infrastructure.” ## What a server holds up A data centre does not fall the way a bridge does. Nobody sees the river crossing go. A payment terminal simply stops responding, or a news player goes blank. Officials and industry figures quoted by The Guardian, as cited by Ars Technica, have warned that repeated strikes could weaken the networks behind Ukraine’s banks, payment systems and public services. A wartime state that has moved so much of its daily life online is particularly exposed to an attack on the wires. The Institute for the Study of War reads the campaign as part of a larger effort. In its September 25 assessment, \[reported by NV\](\), it said that since mid-September Russian forces have stepped up strikes on data and telecom sites as the Kremlin looks for “alternative defeat mechanisms” amid setbacks on the battlefield. These strikes follow earlier ones on ports, railways and logistics, the institute said, and they could raise consumers’ bills as providers repair or replace damaged equipment. A journalist quoted by RSF described the main aim as psychological: to “spread panic.” It is an old idea about power that a regime unable to take a country’s territory will try to make its daily life impossible. The tools in this campaign are new, but the idea is not. ## The arithmetic of the sky The reason the drones get through is partly a matter of numbers. Ars Technica writes that this year’s long-range strikes have run down Ukraine’s stock of missile interceptors. Russia has also rebuilt many of its one-way attack drones with jet engines, which makes them faster and harder to shoot down. rews has described how such [600-kilometre-an-hour drones are outrunning Ukraine’s air defences](https://rews.cc/a/russia-s-600-kilometer-an-hour-drones-are-outrunning-ukraine-a216e6). On October 4 Zelenskyy put figures on the gap. Ukrainian air defences, he said, bring down more than 85 percent of conventional Shahed-type drones, the Iranian design supplied to Russia. Against the newer jet-powered Shaheds the rate drops to 50 or 60 percent. Fewer than one in six of the older drones get through. Of the jet versions, four or five in every ten do. That is why Zelenskyy and his officials keep asking for more air defence, and why Kyiv has been testing new answers, among them [automated gun turrets aimed at the fastest drones](https://rews.cc/a/ukraine-s-ai-gun-turrets-have-started-shooting-down-russia-s-7ad872). The network has some protection of its own. In its \[conflict monitor\](\), ACLED says Ukraine’s decentralised internet could prevent a long nationwide shutdown. It warns, though, that continued attacks on data-processing and storage centres could still cause local and regional disruption to internet access, services and businesses. So the country will probably stay connected, but not everywhere and not all the time. In the meantime the people of Kyiv sit through the outages. Each time, they wait for the companies to repair what was hit, and for the sky to let them do it.