Between 23 and 25 September 2026, Russian strikes damaged several Kyiv data centres. One housed hub equipment for the ISP UTELS, and the Digital Transformation Ministry said that outage cut service to about 100,000 households in Kyiv and the surrounding region, as the Kyiv Independent reported. On 24 September, Interfax-Ukraine reported that Domonet, Kievnet and Faust had suffered infrastructure damage and outages, and that MiroHost's Ukrainian data centre was destroyed. Strikes on Cosmonova's facility on 25 and 26 September forced it out of operation and disrupted video players on Suspilne's website. At least two outlets suspended broadcasts.
This was not random collateral damage. ACLED analyst Tetiana Gaviuk wrote on 1 October that Russian forces have increasingly targeted telecom and data infrastructure since mid-September. She suggested the strikes may be meant to make rerouting services harder, rather than to disable individual providers. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha made a similar argument, saying Russia was hitting major data centres to disrupt the flow of information, per Developing Telecoms. That outlet also reported that Kyivstar's Kyiv headquarters was damaged on 27 September, after earlier damage that month.
The strongest case for the satellite-first view
The argument that Ukraine should lean harder on satellite connectivity is a serious one. Data centres are concentrated, fixed and easy to find. Satellite terminals are dispersed and mobile, and they don't depend on a single building. After four years of war, Starlink has proved itself as resilient connectivity for the military and for civilians in contested areas. On that logic, every strike on a Kyiv facility is another reason to move traffic skyward.
The September strikes complicate that argument for three reasons.
Why satellite cannot absorb the loss
First, the damage fell on services that satellite terminals don't replace. A Starlink dish gives a user a path to the internet. It doesn't restore the hosted websites, the broadcaster's video stack, the exchange-point peering or the local ISP's routing that sat in the destroyed buildings. Cosmonova's outage broke Suspilne's video players for audiences on perfectly healthy home connections. A terminal can't fix a failure in a service's own hosting.
Second, capacity is a problem. The Record reported in February 2026 that officials counted more than 50,000 Starlink terminals operating in Ukraine. That figure is substantial for a front-line and emergency-use network. It is small against roughly 100,000 households that lost service in a single Kyiv-area incident. We could not find a newer official count.
Third, a satellite-first strategy has a policy cost that the strikes make sharper. Ukraine has been whitelisting Starlink terminals since early February. The Ministry of Defence announced on 1 February that it was working with Starlink to allow only authorised terminals, with unverified ones to be disconnected. The Cabinet's release the next day explained the mechanics. Civilians register at a local administrative service centre, businesses verify through the Diia portal, and the military uses the DELTA platform. Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov called the whitelist the only technical solution to Russian drones that use Starlink, as the Kyiv Independent reported on 2 February.
The security rationale is credible, and we don't argue against it. But the effect is that satellite access in Ukraine now passes through a registration gate. During an infrastructure emergency, a household that wants to switch to satellite will find that gate, plus a hardware supply, standing between it and a working connection.
What proportionate policy looks like
The wrong lesson would be to treat the strikes as a reason for sweeping control over the sector, such as mandatory state-directed traffic routing or a freeze on private providers' architecture. Ukraine's internet has survived four years of war largely because thousands of small, independent operators improvised. Kyiv Independent quotes Anatolii Frolenkov of the 1-IX exchange point saying that "the internet will not disappear completely," though operators "may go down for a couple of hours." That flexibility is an asset. MiroHost's founder said about 95% of its clients operate outside Ukraine and were unaffected, which shows how far geographic spread already protects customers who can use it.
President Zelensky said the government decided to strengthen protection of data centres and critical communications infrastructure. Three measures would follow from the evidence, and each builds on the market rather than replacing it:
- Fund geographic redundancy. Co-finance backup hosting and peering sites outside Kyiv, and outside the country where law allows, rather than concentrating protection on a few sites.
- Keep the whitelist lean for emergencies. Pre-register a reserve of terminals and publish a fast-track procedure for ISPs and broadcasters whose fixed infrastructure has been destroyed.
- Publish incident data. Regulators should release outage and restoration timelines, which would let operators and researchers judge whether the strikes are a campaign.
The bottom line
Starlink is a vital backstop for Ukraine, but the September strikes show it does not replace data centres, peering points or the competitive ISP market. Ukraine's most useful response would be to make that market more redundant and to keep emergency satellite access as simple to obtain as security permits. A policy that treats satellite as the plan, and terrestrial networks as legacy, would leave hosting and broadcasting exposed to the next round of strikes.