Since the end of last May, hundreds of thousands of people residing in the area that Russia has occupied in Ukraine they have their Internet and telephone connection controlled by the Russian authorities, according to Wired. Local Ukrainian service providers, like Kherson’s, KhersonTelecom, have been forced to redirect all your traffic through a Russian providerand therefore, of Russian censorship, which limits access to various online resources and sources of information.
As of May 30, an estimated 280,000 people have intermittent connection problems, as their Internet service providers in Ukraine are forced to redirect their connections through Russian infrastructure. The companies have had to do so under threat from the Russian occupation forces that if they did not they would have to stop serving their customers. Meanwhile, the Russians have been taking control of servers, telecom towers, and other critical communications infrastructure.
KhersonTelecom first switched its Internet traffic to a Russian network on April 30, then switched back to its Ukrainian connections for most of May. But since the 30th it seems that he has returned to the Russian networks with no sign of returning. Currently, all of the company’s traffic is directed via Miranda Medium, a Crimea-based company that is in turn connected to Russian telecommunications provider Rostelecom. Its partners include the Russian Security Service and the Russian Ministry of Defense.
The next day, state-controlled Russian media outlets such as RIA Novosti claimed that the areas of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia they had officially switched to Internet connections from Russia. In addition, several days before, that same media indicated that both regions were going to start using russian phone code +7.
According to Victor Zhora, Deputy Director of the Ukrainian Cybersecurity Agency, the SSSCIP or State Services for Special Communications and Information Protection, in the occupied regions of Ukraine, including Kherson, Luhansk, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia; there is a network made up of about 1,200 different service providers.
Liliia Malon, Commissioner of the Ukrainian Telecommunications Regulatorensures that they are aware «that most of them are forced to connect to the Russian telecommunications infrastructure and redirect traffic. Unfortunately, there are cases of mass routing of traffic from Ukrainian operators to Russian channels. Ukrainian networks are partially blocked or completely disconnected«.
A technical analysis confirms that the connections are changing. Cloudflare has observed traffic from KehersonTelecom passing through Miranda Media for over two weeks this June. Doug Madory, Director of Internet monitoring and analytics company Kentik has also verified that there are half a dozen networks in Kherzon that are connecting to that provider, and that in addition, «every couple of days there is another company that switches to Russian transit from Ukraine«.
Since the beginning of the Ukraine invasion in February, disabling or blocking Internet infrastructure has been a frequent Russian tactic, because controlling the flow of information is such a powerful weapon. Russian missiles have destroyed television towers and a cyberattack against a satellite system has even affected several areas of Europe. This apart from misinformation. But despite everything, Ukraine’s Internet companies have managed to keep Ukrainian citizens connected. In the occupied areas, the picture is different, as we have seen so far.
Spokesmen for two of Ukraine’s major internet providers, Kyivstar and Lifecell, have pointed out that the Russian occupation forces have taken their equipment offline in Kherson, and that they have no access to it to repair it or restore service. According to the SSSCIP, 20% of the telecommunications infrastructure in all of Ukraine has been damaged or destroyed, and there are tens of thousands of kilometers of fiber networks that are not working.
The Russian occupation forces are taking over the Internet systems in the occupied areas in various ways. First of all, through physical access, since they are confiscating equipment. And once they have their control, they tell the Ukrainian workers to reconfigure the networks to Miranda Media, according to Zhora, who notes that “if the local employees of these providers do not want to help them with the reconfiguration, they do it themselves«.
The SSSCIP has advised workers not to risk their lives or the lives of their families, and Zhora says they hope “be able to release these territories soon and that this temporary period of blackmailing to these operators passes«. He has also stated that it is unlikely that communications can be restored in the area before it is liberated. That means that, for now at least, connections will continue to be routed through Russia, allowing not only control over communications, but also the deployment of Russian propaganda.
Russia also tries to control communications through mobile phones. In recent weeks there has been a mysterious new mobile company in Kherson. According to various images it has white, unbranded SIM cards for sale. Very little is known about them, but it seems that the network they use is Russian, because the prefix +7 appears at the beginning of the numbers. There is also evidence of two other breakaway mobile operators from Donetsk and Luhansk expanding the territory they cover to recently occupied areas. Everything points to a Russian bank will open soon in Kherson and that they are already starting to give Russian passports in the area. The Russians have also moved the occupied zones to the Russian time zone.
The Russians are following, in the regions they have occupied, the same steps they followed in Crimea after occupying it in 2014. In 2017 they completely disconnected it from Ukrainian traffic and today there is only Russian traffic in the area. After occupying it, the Russian authorities deployed two new Internet cables across the Kerch Strait, through which they connected the area with Russia, in a process that lasted three years and connections were transferred little by little over that time.
