Datagroup Says Kyiv Data Centre Beyond Repair

Ukrainian telecoms operator Datagroup says a Russian ballistic missile strike has destroyed its data centre in Kyiv beyond repair. “Another attack on our data center, this time using ballistic weapons. Unfortunately, the data center infrastructure has been completely destroyed, and restoration is impossible,” chief executive Mykhailo Shelemba wrote on Facebook on Monday 19 October, Interfax-Ukraine reported.

It was the second time the site had been hit; Datagroup reported damage there in late September. The company says no employees were hurt and that it is serving customers from backup sites. That makes this less a story about one building than about how Ukraine’s digital infrastructure keeps running when a facility is lost for good.

In brief

Datagroup says a Russian ballistic strike overnight on 18-19 October destroyed its Kyiv data centre, and that repairing it is impossible.
It was the second strike on the site after damage on 25 September; the company says services continue from backup sites and no staff were injured.
Datagroup has not given any figures for how many customers were affected this time.

A second hit, and this time no way back

The company’s own words leave little doubt about the scale of the damage. “Unfortunately, repairing it and resuming operations are impossible,” Datagroup said, according to Ukrainska Pravda, which reported that the overnight attack on 18-19 October left the data centre’s equipment and infrastructure completely inoperable. The Kyiv Post quoted the company as saying: “The restoration and further operation [of the data center] are impossible.”

This was not the first strike. On 25 September, Datagroup reported damage to the same data centre but said customer data had been preserved and services were continuing through backup facilities, according to the Kyiv Post. Interfax-Ukraine said that after the September attack the company’s specialists were assessing the damage and working to restore the infrastructure. Now, the company says, restoration is impossible.

What has not changed is the company’s fallback. Datagroup says its services continue to run from backup sites, and that no employees were injured, according to all three outlets. It has not said how many customers, if any, have lost service as a result of the latest strike.

Data centres have become a target

The strike fits a wider pattern of attacks on digital infrastructure. Russian attacks in late September damaged several data centres and communications facilities in Kyiv, the Kyiv Post reported, with Datagroup, MiroHost and UTELS all reporting damage to their infrastructure, while other providers saw service disruption.

Moscow has been open about it. On 16 October, Russia’s chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, told President Vladimir Putin that Russian forces were striking data centres alongside strategic bridges and railway infrastructure, according to the Kyiv Post.

The targeting runs both ways. The Kyiv Post noted that Ukraine launched a series of drone attacks on data centres run by Russian technology company Yandex in October. TSN has reported on drone strikes that left Yandex Cloud in “limited mode” and on Ukrainian drones hitting Sberbank’s data centre, in a strike TSN reported did not disrupt operations.

Our read

This is TSN’s analysis. Datagroup’s experience shows why backup sites matter: a data centre has been lost outright, yet the company says it is still serving customers. For any operator of critical digital infrastructure, the lesson is that redundancy in a separate location is not optional when physical sites can be destroyed. The open questions are what Datagroup’s customers actually experienced, and whether it will rebuild in Kyiv or rely on its backup sites.