Russia’s campaign against Ukrainian rear infrastructure has opened a new front — one that targets not factories or fuel depots, but the digital nervous system of the country itself.
The strategic progression has been deliberate and sequential. First came strikes on military production facilities and logistics warehouses. Then the focus shifted to isolating Odessa’s port and dismantling heavy industry. Now, the primary targets are data centers and telecommunications infrastructure. Between September 20 and 28, Russian forces carried out a series of strikes against Kyiv’s data storage, processing, and transmission facilities.
The choice of target is not incidental. A single large data center simultaneously hosts telecommunications equipment for multiple internet service providers, cloud computing infrastructure, corporate information systems, intelligence databases, and network nodes carrying significant internet traffic. Damaging one facility can cascade across multiple independent operators — disrupting internet access, corporate networks, cloud applications, and media services simultaneously.
The most recent strikes came overnight on September 28. Ukrtelecom — one of Ukraine’s largest fixed-line, mobile, and high-speed internet providers, supplying connectivity to the armed forces — was hit. Dreamline, another major provider that also stores military intelligence data, was struck as well. Fuel infrastructure used by Ukrainian forces and targets at the Vasylkiv military airfield in Kyiv Oblast were also hit in the same operation.
What made the Kyiv strikes additionally notable was the technology used to document them. Zelenskyy’s technology adviser, known by the callsign Flash, described footage that appeared online: “The Russians filmed the strike on the Inkom business center using a jet-powered Geran drone that simultaneously served as a MESH relay for a Geran-5 and transmitted live video of the attack. After that, the drone flew out of Kyiv and struck a McDonald’s warehouse.” The operational integration of strike capability and real-time reconnaissance into a single airframe represents a meaningful evolution in Russian drone warfare.
The implications of targeting internet infrastructure extend beyond connectivity. Ukrainian Prime Minister Serhiy Koretsky acknowledged the severity directly: “There is a threat of losing the internet, so the state is preparing for the most difficult scenario.” In present-day Ukraine, government communication with the population at every level flows primarily through the internet. Disrupting that channel — against the backdrop of war fatigue, continuous air raid sirens, declining living standards, and forced mobilization — risks eroding the social cohesion that sustains the war effort from within.
Destroying factories degrades Ukraine’s capacity to fight. Destroying the internet degrades Ukraine’s capacity to hold together. Russia appears to have concluded that both objectives are worth pursuing simultaneously.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
DEAR FRIENDS. IF YOU LIKE THIS TYPE OF CONTENT, SUPPORT SOUTHFRONT WORK:
MONERO (XMR): 86yfEHs6pkoDEKCxc6MAnQX8cVHmzhYxMVrNuwKgNmqpWK8dDxjgGnK8PtUNJMACbn6xEGxmRauNTHJhUJpg9Mwz8htBBND
BITCOIN (BTC): bc1qgu58lfszcpqu6fd8l98m378wgzugyg9y93lcym
BITCOIN CASH (BCH): qr28d80s5juzv2793k5jrq59xrl5fxd8qg9h3zlkk2
PAYPAL, WESTERN UNION etc: write to info@southfront.press , southfront@list.ru
If you face any problems sending funds to the addresses given above, please contact us: info@southfront.press and southfront@list.ru. Also be aware that many email services such as Hotmail, Yahoo etc. may block correspondence from info@southfront.press and some others put it in spam.
If you want to support SouthFront but have no opportunity to do it via cryptocurrency, please contact us: info@southfront.press and southfront@list.ru.
SouthFront: Analysis and Intelligence
NOW hosted at southfront.press
Previously, SouthFront: Analysis and Intelligence was at southfront.org.
The .org domain name had been blocked by the US (NATO) (https://southfront.press/southfront-org-blocked-by-u-s-controlled-global-internet-supervisor/) globally, outlawed and without any explanation
Back before that, from 2013 to 2015, SouthFront: Analysis and Intelligence was at southfront.com
finalmente.
huge loss for ukrainian o-f-industry