Russia blasts a southern Ukraine region and hackers strike Ukrainian phone and internet services

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine came under heavy attacks from the air and from cyberspace Tuesday, local officials said, as nearly 600 Russian shells, rockets and other projectiles rained down on a southern region and unidentified hackers knocked out the phone and internet services of the country’s biggest telecom provider.

One person was killed and four injured during 24 hours of Russian bombardment of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, according to Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the regional military administration.

The number of projectiles fired at Kherson was the highest number for at least the past two weeks, though local authorities have said between 200-500 are commonly launched against the region every day.

Long-range barrages have been a feature of the 21-month war. As winter sets in and hampers troop movements on both sides, artillery, missiles and drones are playing an increasing role.

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Meanwhile, Ukrainian telecom provider Kyivstar said it came under a “powerful” attack by hackers. The company serves more than 24 million mobile customers across the country.

“The war with Russia has many dimensions, and one of them is in cyberspace,” Kyivstar Director-General Oleksandr Komarov said in a video statement.

“Unfortunately, this morning Kyivstar became the target of a powerful hacker attack, as a result of which communication services and internet access are temporarily unavailable,” he said.

The company gave no estimate for when services might be restored. It said its specialists were working with law enforcement agencies and special state services on solving the problem.

Also, a Ukrainian online bank said it fought off a massive distributed denial-of-service attack on Tuesday. A DDoS attack employs a network of distributed computers to direct junk traffic at the target site in an effort to render it unusable.

In other developments, Ukraine claimed to have captured a tactically important hill in the Donetsk region, where the front line has barely budged since 2014.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on social media that his troops had taken the foothold, which provides a vantage point over the front line near Pivdenne, a mining town to the northwest of the Donetsk city of Horlivka.

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