Nothing Quiet on the Eastern Digital Front: The IT Army of Ukraine’s Cyber Operations against Russian Wartime Assets

Nothing Quiet on the Eastern Digital Front: The IT Army of Ukraine’s Cyber Operations against Russian Wartime Assets

New Strategy Center publishes a new study entitled „Nothing Quiet on the Eastern Digital Front: The IT Army of Ukraine’s Cyber Operations against Russian Wartime Assets„, focusing on the cyber operations, carried out during the two years of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, by a group of Ukrainian patriotic hackers and international hacktivists, set up at the initiative of Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov: the IT Army of Ukraine.

Based on a wealth of posts on the group’s public Telegram channel, collected between February 26, 2022 and February 26, 2024, this research highlights three types of cyberattacks that affected the functionality of Russia’s digital assets – DDoS, data and information leaks, and attacks targeting Russian propaganda platforms with the aim of countering it – as well as a number of initiatives aimed at cultivating the resilience of Ukrainian users in the face of Russian cyberthreats. Based on these, the study assesses the (i)legal character of Ukraine’s IT Army, proposes for the first time a possible internal hierarchical organization of the Army, and draws attention to some lessons that Romania could learn from Kyiv’s cyber warfare experience.

The author of the study is Răzvan Ceuca, External Relations Expert at the New Strategy Center, who also received a substantial contribution from Dr. Iulian-Florentin Popa, Associate Professor at the „Babeș-Bolyai” University of Cluj-Napoca and a peer review from Brigadier General (ret.) Daniel Ioniță, Senior Associate Expert at the New Strategy Center.

The study can be accessed here:

Nothing Quiet on the Eastern Digital Front: The IT Army of Ukraine’s Cyber Operations against Russian Wartime Assets