Russia is running a deliberate campaign against Ukraine’s digital backbone. Beginning September 23, 2026, jet-powered Geran-5 attack drones struck co-location data centers and internet exchange points across Kyiv, physically destroying the shared hubs where multiple internet providers peer their networks. Because several ISPs route traffic through the same building, a single strike severs connectivity for every network whose equipment sits inside it. Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation confirmed that about 100,000 households in Kyiv and the surrounding region experienced internet problems after the first wave of strikes.
The weapon is an evolution. Ukraine’s military intelligence confirmed the use of the Geran-5, a jet-powered drone roughly 6 meters long carrying a 90-kilogram warhead, flying at up to 600 km/h and altitudes up to 6,000 meters, with a claimed range of about 1,000 kilometers. First seen in January 2026, it is far harder for Ukrainian air defenses and interceptor drones to engage than the slower propeller-driven Shahed models that preceded it. The gap between the threat and the available air defense is what the campaign exploits.
The operational damage is specific and compounding. Internet monitor NetBlocks confirmed connectivity losses across at least four networks — Kyiv Link, Pautina, UTELS and Crazy Network. MiroHost’s Kyiv data center was completely destroyed; equipment stored by CityHost was destroyed as well. On September 26, the TV news stations Army TV and Novyny Live temporarily halted live broadcasts because the strikes took their network infrastructure down. On September 25, a drone struck the Datagroup business center in central Kyiv, killing four people.
The cruelest effect is the feedback loop. Ukraine’s air-raid warning system depends heavily on internet-delivered push notifications through smartphones and messaging apps, and those notifications cannot reach residents whose providers are offline because their data centers have been destroyed. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia is targeting the facilities precisely to disrupt the flow of life-saving information, and called them critical civilian infrastructure. Russia’s Defense Ministry claims the strikes hit two data centers — New-Telco and United DC — that it says served Ukraine’s military; those claims could not be independently verified, and Ukrainian authorities have not confirmed them.
Ukrainian officials have pressed partners for more air-defense capacity and interceptor stockpiles, and the pattern fits what the International Criminal Court is already investigating: prosecutors are examining Russian strikes on civilian infrastructure that disrupted the mobile data services transmitting air-raid warnings as potential war crimes. Ukraine’s internet has not collapsed — repair crews restored service to most customers within roughly two hours after the first wave — but the economics of physical redundancy favor the attacker. Smaller ISPs cannot afford to duplicate core equipment across multiple data centers, so each rebuilt facility is a target again. For the technology sector, the story is that data centers are now kinetic targets in war, not just commercial ones, and the cost of defending them is a hardware problem before it is a software one.