Russia widens strikes to Ukraine's data centres as Kyiv counts outages

Russia's defence ministry confirmed it hit the Datagroup site and said Ukrainian military intelligence was using the facility. Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said on Friday evening that seven people had been killed and 59 injured in Russian overnight attacks.

The BBC verified footage of the damaged Inkom business centre that housed Datagroup. Datagroup said its specialists were assessing damage from the daytime attack, but that all services "continue to operate from backup sites." The Russian ministry also said its forces had targeted data processing and telecommunications centres belonging to New-Telco, United DC, Kyivstar and Parkovyi over the past few days.

What a hit on a data centre actually breaks

The damage is not only to servers. Data centres depend on a chain of systems that has to run without interruption, and each link fails in its own way. Utility power arrives at medium voltage, typically 11 to 33 kV in Europe. Transformers and switchgear step it down, and an uninterruptible power supply conditions it before it reaches the racks. Generators, usually diesel units rated at 1 to 3.5 MW each, cover longer outages but take seconds to start; the UPS holds the load during that gap. Cooling is the other half of the problem. Every watt a server draws becomes a watt of heat that must be removed, and cooling typically accounts for 30 to 40 percent of a facility's total power use, according to technical guides on data centre engineering. Air cooling, chilled water systems and, increasingly, direct liquid or immersion cooling are the main options. If heat removal stops, servers shut down within minutes.

That is the physical reason strikes on data centres translate so quickly into civilian disruption. In the north-western city of Lutsk, electronic information boards at public transport stops were not working on Friday. The city council said this was "due to damage caused by a Russian attack on data centres in Kyiv."

"The Russians are constantly expanding their escalation operation: American and other businesses, data centres, internet providers – for Russia, all ordinary life is simply a target," Zelensky wrote in a social media post on Friday.

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha framed the targeting of data centres as an attack on civilian infrastructure. He said rapid alerts about missile and drone threats "save lives" and that the facilities are "not a military target." Late on Friday, Zelensky said "additional decisions" had been made at a meeting with Ukraine's top defence and security officials to protect data centres and other critical communications facilities.

Decentralisation as a defence

Serhii Beskrestnov, Zelensky's top adviser on defence technologies, admitted on Thursday that "there may be local disruptions" after Russian attacks, and that the cost of internet services could rise to cover repairs. But he stressed that Ukraine's internet network is highly decentralised, so the country "will not be left without internet access." Some firms have already begun moving data from damaged servers to facilities abroad.

Moscow has also intensified strikes on Ukraine's energy and railway infrastructure in recent weeks as winter approaches. Ukraine's military has been hitting Russian oil refineries and logistics hubs, saying they help finance Russia's war effort. Asked late on Friday about resuming direct peace negotiations, President Vladimir Putin said Moscow would "give careful thought" to the idea, but stressed that Ukraine "must feel our retaliatory strikes."

Separately on Friday, the European Union agreed to release €6.6bn for Ukraine, including €900 million for the EU's Military Assistance Mission and a €1 billion fund for joint procurement, according to the bloc's top diplomat Kaja Kallas. Poland's prosecutors also opened an investigation into what they called an arson attack on a Starlink satellite station in Wola Krobowska on Wednesday. They said there was "a reasonable suspicion" the perpetrators acted on orders from Russian special services. Moscow has not commented.