by Ukraine estimates it will need $4.67 billion (€4.38 billion) over 10 years to repair a costly expected casualty of Russia’s ongoing invasion: its telecommunications network.
Stanislav Prybytko, Director General of the Directorate for Mobile Broadband in Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, told Euronews Next in a series of estimates that Russia has destroyed more than 4,300 mobile base stations and a quarter of the country’s internet networks since for February 2022.
The country’s fiber optic network has also been affected, with more than 30,000 km of cables scattered across Ukraine damaged or destroyed in the fighting so far.
“The war continues, and the losses are increasing with each passing day,” Prybytko told Euronews Next.
“Electronic communication is one of the most strategic and important areas for the functioning of the state… any breakdown or failure in this sector has critical consequences for all sectors of the population”.
Where most of the loss is occurring
The World Bank put the estimated damage to the telecommunications sector closer to $2.1 billion (€1.97 billion) in a December 2023 report seen by Euronews Next, but confirmed Prybytko’s figure for the total requirement.
That’s because Ukraine’s recovery plan would include not only physical repairs to telecommunications infrastructure but “capacity building in cyber security and other areas.”
This damage to critical communications infrastructure, the report continued, increased by 29 percent from 2022 to 2023.
The World Bank report found that telecommunications damage does not vary across the country, nor by who provides those services.
Fixed broadband operators feel forty-five percent of the total network damage, followed closely by mobile operators at 43 percent.
The rest is spread between the postal service and broadcasters.
Operators for Lifecell and Vodafone Ukraine, two of three “backbone” telecommunications companies operating in the country, said Euronews Next that their companies have so far been able to absorb the costs of their damaged networks but will not be able to do so if the war continues indefinitely.
Vodafone has already spent 2 billion Hryvnias (€47 million) on repairing over 900 of its damaged sites, but a representative from the company previously told Euronews Next that the damage could be twice as much.
A similar picture at Lifecell, where at least 1,000 sites have been repaired since the beginning of the invasion at a cost of $150 million (€138 million) from the company’s own profits.
For smaller suppliers, the picture is less positive.
About 720 mobile and internet providers suffered “significant losses” during the war, Prybytko said, with just under 100 on the verge of bankruptcy.
The heaviest hit area for telecommunications damage is tied between Donetska Oblast and Kharkivska Oblast with 17 percent each, according to the World Bank report.
Zaporizka Oblast, Khersonska Oblast, and Kyivska Oblast districts of Ukraine were also hit, all accounting for between 11 and 13 percent of the total damage to the country’s telecommunications infrastructure.
Prybytko said the estimates are still the most reliable the government has, but may not reflect the damage already done in the first months of 2024.
‘extremely difficult’ to reach occupied areas in Ukraine
Prybytko’s and the World Bank’s estimates only include damage observed in non-Russian occupied areas.
Prybytko, along with Lifecell and Vodafone told Euronews Next that it is “extremely difficult” to scope the damage in Russian-occupied areas of Russia.
Russia is in parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, Mykolayiv, and Zaporizhzhya regions as well as the island of Crimea.
“The first thing the Russians do after they are in Ukrainian cities is to cut people off from communication,” Prybytko said.
“Often, they destroy or completely undermine the telecommunications infrastructure or take equipment to Russia”.
Engineers are routinely sent out to the front lines of Ukraine’s war effort with only a helmet and a small first-aid kit to repair Lifecell and Vodafone mobile base stations hit by Russian shelling. has been said before Euronews Next.
Their team is only sent out when it is determined that it is safe enough to do so. At times, the two providers said their staff are embedded with the national defense forces of Ukraine to carry out their repairs in unsafe areas.
Prybytko said that it will be difficult to restore telecommunications to its pre-war level until there are “conditions for the safe living of consumers and service providers”.
However, the World Bank estimates that about 12 percent of Ukrainian households have lost a mobile service connection: an issue that, according to the report, “affects not only personal communication but also vital services and economic activities too”.
‘Decentralization saves us’
Despite what Prybyto calls “continuous shelling,” he said he wants Ukraine’s allies to know that the government and private providers are working together to keep citizens connected.
The government gave the example of Kharkiv, where it says 80 percent of the city’s mobile base stations are still operational even though “almost all critical energy infrastructure has been destroyed,” due to recent Russian attacks.
“This is possible, in part, because the operator companies have prepared in advance for outages, having received generators, and established technical teams to work in critical conditions,” said Prybytko.
Since the first day of the war, Prybytko said his ministry, the country’s telecommunications regulators, and individual providers have worked together to ensure that Ukrainians are able to stay connected. That means mobile operators share cell towers, destroy generators and even their base.
The three major operators in the country also got rid of domestic roaming early in the invasion, so customers could stay connected to one network or another.
Ukraine is filling any gaps in this private telecommunications service with other forms of communication, Prybytko said.
Ukraine is also one of the largest users of SpaceX’s Starlink, a series of satellites in space that transmit radio signals to users on Earth, with 47,000 units in use by the country, according to Prybytko.
“If the fixed Internet fails due to a power outage, mobile communication helps, and vice versa,” said Prybytko.
“And if the Russian occupiers completely destroy traditional networks, Starlink satellite communications come to the rescue.
“[This] Decentralization saves us”.
In some cases, Prybytko said, the telecommunications industry is even growing.
During the second year of the invasion, the government said it established Internet access in more than 5,000 educational shelters, 3,500 preschools and 571 health care facilities.
One of his goals this year, Prybytko said, is to open free Wi-Fi zones in libraries, schools and service centers. A new pilot for 5G networks could follow.
Ukraine is also working to make its electronic communications field “more transparent,” for its “eventual integration into the European Union,” Prybytko said.
This is the second part of a two-part series looking at the impact of the Russian invasion on telecommunications under pressure in Ukraine. Read the first part here.
