Kiev [Ukraine], December 13: Ukraine's biggest mobile network operator said it hoped to restore operations by Wednesday after coming under what appeared to be the largest cyberattack since Russia launched its war on the country in February 2022.
Tuesday's attack on Kyivstar, which has more than half of Ukraine's population as mobile subscribers, knocked out services, damaged IT infrastructure and put millions of people in danger of not receiving alerts of potential Russian air assaults.
It also disrupted the air raid alert systems themselves in parts of Kyiv.
The company's Chief Executive Officer OleksandrKomarov said the attack was "a result of" the war with Russia.
"War is also happening in cyberspace. Unfortunately, we have been hit as a result of this war," he told national television.
"(The attack) significantly damaged (our) infrastructure, limited access, we could not counter it at the virtual level, so we shut down Kyivstar physically to limit the enemy's access."
Komarov did not say which Russian body he believed to be responsible, but said personal data of users had not been compromised.
Russian hacktivist group Killnet claimed responsibility for the attack via a statement on the Telegram messaging app, but did not provide evidence.
A source close to Kyivstar said the Ukrainian military was not affected by the outage.
Ukraine's SBU intelligence agency told Reuters one of the possibilities it was investigating was that of a cyber-attack conducted by Russian security services.
Source: Fijian Broadcasting Corporation
