Four killed in Kyiv office strike as attacks disrupt internet access

The strike came during a week of attacks on data centres and internet providers. Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation estimated that internet disruptions following attacks on September 23 and 24 affected about 100,000 households in Kyiv and the surrounding region. That is a count of households affected by temporary outages, not people killed, individual users or connections known to remain down on September 27.⁠27⁠1

We reported on September 13 that separate drone strikes on Kyiv petrol stations had killed two people on September 11. The four deaths reported here were in a later attack, at an office building, while the communications outages began before that fatal strike. They are distinct events, not a revised toll for the petrol-station strikes.

The September 25 casualty count changed as responders worked. Kyiv Post reported three deaths in an account at about 3:10 p.m. Kyiv time; a police notice published at 4:45 p.m. reported four bodies. Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported seven injured, including a child, while police later reported at least 10 injured. These are differing counts of injuries in the same attack, not figures to add.⁠42⁠22⁠40

The Guardian identified the fatal strike as a hit on Datagroup’s offices. Separately checked police reporting calls the struck site an office building, without establishing that all four victims died on Datagroup premises. Datagroup director Mykhailo Shelemba said the company’s data centre was damaged, but its employees were unharmed, client data was preserved and services continued from backup sites. The victims must not be described as Datagroup employees; the checked accounts do not conclusively map the company’s equipment onto the building where the bodies were found.⁠1⁠40⁠44

The earlier communications damage had effects well beyond one building. Providers reported disruptions affecting Pavutina, UTELS, KyivLink and Crazy Network. Crazy Network reported lost customer internet access in Kyiv, Vinnytsia and the Khmelnytskyi region, along with a disruption to its telephone service. One account said most UTELS customers were reconnected in about two hours but two hosting firms had no estimated restoration date. The two-hour recovery was UTELS’s, not a timetable for every provider or all 100,000 households.⁠5⁠7⁠10

Keeping the dates straight matters. Reports of damage to a Solomianskyi office building housing communications equipment on September 23 cannot automatically be treated as accounts of the September 25 strike that killed four people. Nor does a report suggesting three Kyiv data centres might have been damaged establish three confirmed direct hits.⁠6⁠31

The pressure continued. Cosmonova’s Kyiv data centre was struck twice on September 26, damaging its backbone network and interrupting internet services, television broadcasts and some Ukrainian media operations. Reporting names Kolo.TV among the affected providers. Cosmonova said its staff were safe and client data was preserved through geographic redundancy, but the damaged Kyiv facility would not operate again. It was moving services elsewhere and restoring them gradually. Preserved data is not the same thing as an uninterrupted connection, and relocation is not a reopening. A September 27 account of the second strike does not establish a third strike that day.⁠49⁠50⁠51⁠52⁠23⁠54

Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha described the targeting of major Ukrainian data centres as an attempt to disrupt information flow. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said attacks on data centres and internet providers affected people’s ability to stay connected, study and work. The Guardian described an apparent effort to weaken Ukraine’s digital economy. The service interruptions and damaged facilities are documented; a specific operational order setting out that purpose is not. Nor do the checked accounts establish a nationwide internet collapse or a verified interruption to hospital or banking services.⁠1⁠2⁠3

In Poland, a separate investigation concerns a fire on September 23 at a Starlink ground station in Wola Krobowska, which supports connectivity in Central and Eastern Europe, including Ukraine. Accounts describe damage to its power infrastructure, including a transformer, distribution board and generator. They do not establish whether the antennas were damaged, whether the station remained operational or whether Ukrainian forces lost connectivity as a result.⁠33⁠18⁠39

Polish Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski called the fire sabotage intended to disrupt internet access used by Ukrainian forces and raised the possibility of Russian involvement. Poland’s National Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation on September 25 into suspected sabotage, activity for a foreign intelligence service against Poland and a terrorism-related offence. Prosecutor Przemysław Nowak said there was reasonable suspicion of orders from Russian special services. That is an investigative suspicion, not an identified perpetrator or proof of coordination with the Kyiv attacks.⁠35⁠33⁠56

The week’s toll cannot be reduced to one outage figure. Backup sites kept some services running and some customers reconnected quickly; other providers had no restoration estimate, and one damaged data centre is closed for good. Four people died in an office strike. Both kinds of harm are real, but the evidence does not justify assigning those deaths to Datagroup’s staff or folding a suspected fire in Poland into a proven coordinated operation.