One year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the country’s overall resilience and defiance has been inspiring, but telecommunications and internet connectivity has grown much more difficult.
Initially the country’s internet network mostly withstood with some outages and slowdowns, but that has changed over time as the aggressors devote more effort in destroying physical locations and deploying malware and other cybersecurity weapons.
For example, researchers at Top10VPN recently reported some distressing analysis including:
The Ukrainian internet has shrunk by at least 16% nationwide since the beginning of the war. 17% of all network-connected devices previously detectable via internet scans appear to have been lost. Accessible IP addresses have reduced by 81% in Kherson—a key Ukrainian city on the Black Sea—, 59% in Donetsk and 56% in Luhansk since the invasion. Kherson has suffered the longest period of the most severe outages, with almost 1,500 hours total.
There have been as many as 276 internet disruptions of varying severity in Ukraine since March 2022, totaling almost 19,000 hours and at least least 45 severe outages lasting over 3,800 hours, Top10VPN stated.
“The deliberate destruction of physical infrastructure, intentional internet outages and the large-scale movement of people has led to unstable and reduced connections throughout the country,” Top10VPN stated.
“The overwhelming majority of digital violations have occurred in the occupied regions, where the aggressors have restricted access to the internet, introduced digital censorship measures, and taken control of the telecommunications infrastructure,” Top10VPN stated. “The initiatives have stifled Ukrainians’
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