In the last week of September 2026, two separate incidents exposed how thin Ukraine's connectivity margin is. Russian strikes on Kyiv knocked out service for about 100,000 households. Separately, a fire at a Starlink ground station in central Poland, operated by state-owned Exatel, is being investigated as possible sabotage. One event hit fixed-line networks and the other hit the satellite layer that Ukraine has leaned on since 2022. Neither was fatal, but both were warnings.
What happened
The Record reported that Kyiv ISPs Kyiv Link, Pautina, Utels and Crazy Network reported outages after the strikes. Russia's Defense Ministry named two data centers, New-Telco and United DC, as targets. That claim is Moscow's own and has not been independently verified. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called the infrastructure "critical civilian infrastructure that ensures people can access life-saving information. It is not a military target." The Kyiv Independent added detail: Utels lost power to core equipment after a data center was hit, Crazy Network's central traffic exchange was damaged, and hosting provider MiroHost's Ukrainian data center was destroyed. Separately, a September 11 attack damaged a Kyivstar engineering office in Kyiv, and a September 17 attack hit a building housing Kyivstar network equipment in Kyiv Oblast; Kyivstar said its network was unaffected by the first.
On the Poland fire, the same Record report says authorities see indications of deliberate arson. It also says no Russian involvement has been confirmed. We should hold to that. The station serves satellite internet across Europe, including Ukraine, so its loss matters whoever is responsible.
The case for treating this as military logic
The strongest argument against calling these strikes illegitimate targeting is Moscow's: modern armies run on commercial networks, so data centers carry military traffic, and Ukraine itself uses satellite links for drone and missile-warning coordination. Sybiha made the same connection in reverse, saying connectivity is critical to delivering warnings to civilians. That dual-use overlap is real, and it is why international humanitarian law's proportionality and distinction tests, not slogans, should decide each case. A data center hosting court registries, banks and household broadband is overwhelmingly civilian in function. It does not become a lawful target because some packets are also military.
Why dependency on one satellite provider is the wrong lesson
The instinctive reaction is that Ukraine should simply buy more satellite capacity. That is half right. Satellite links are what you fall back on when fiber and data centers are down, and Starlink's speed and terminal availability have no close substitute today. But Emerging Europe's analysis notes that alternatives such as OneWeb/Eutelsat, Viasat, Inmarsat and Iridium "trail Starlink in speed, coverage, and the availability of user terminals," and it raises reports that SpaceX could geofence frontline usage. A service controlled by one private company, with ground infrastructure in third countries, is a policy risk as well as a technical one. Kyiv cannot audit it, harden it, or guarantee it.
The Polish fire shows a second problem. Satellite constellations still depend on terrestrial gateways, and those are physical, fixed and findable. Redundancy therefore has to be layered: multiple satellite providers, multiple ground stations in multiple countries, and diversified terrestrial routes and exchange points.
Europe's official backup is not yet available
The European answer is GOVSATCOM, the EU's pooled governmental satellite communications service. In February 2026 the Commissioner said "Last month we started GOVSATCOM operations", and that Norway and Iceland may take part alongside Member States. Ukraine is only "expected to join at a later stage." The Commission's Ukraine support page states that Ukraine's access to GOVSATCOM and IRIS², the EU's planned secure constellation, "is subject to a formal international agreement," and that the Council authorized negotiations by Decision (EU) 2026/587 on March 9, 2026.
The case for that process is sound. Sensitive governmental services need legal terms for third-country access, including security vetting and liability. But the Council authorized negotiations in March, and the page we reviewed shows no concluded agreement. The strikes happened while Ukraine remained outside the system built partly for its situation. Policymakers should treat the agreement as urgent rather than routine.
What proportionate policy looks like
The pro-innovation approach is to widen supply, not to mandate a single champion or regulate commercial providers into scarcity. Concretely:
- Conclude the GOVSATCOM and IRIS² agreement with Ukraine on an accelerated timeline, with interim access to existing EU pooled capacity where legally possible.
- Fund multi-provider terminals and gateways so Ukrainian users can fail over between constellations rather than depend on one operator's goodwill.
- Harden and disperse exchange points and data centers. The 1-IX internet exchange's Anatolii Frolenkov told the Kyiv Independent that attacks have become systematic since September, even if wiping out Ukraine's internet would be extremely difficult. Dispersal, backup power and offsite replication are cheap relative to the cost of repeated outages.
- Protect gateway sites in NATO countries as critical infrastructure, with clear incident-sharing between Polish authorities, operators and Kyiv.
- Avoid heavy-handed controls on commercial traffic. Ukraine's decentralized, competitive ISP market is part of why the outages have so far been local and temporary. Rules that centralize routing or demand state-run chokepoints would trade resilience for control.
Bottom line
The September strikes did not take Ukraine offline, and the decentralized network that absorbed them is the model to protect. The weak points are the ones the incidents exposed: concentrated data center sites, a satellite layer reliant on one vendor and vulnerable ground stations, and a European backup that Ukraine cannot yet use. Each can be fixed with investment and diplomacy rather than new restrictions on the open internet. Until they are, every strike on a data center is also a test of how quickly the alternatives can be switched on.