Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov said that hundreds of thousands of volunteers are involved in the Ukrainian IT army.
This was stated by the head of the ministry in an interview with Spiegel.
"The IT army consists of individuals and companies with cybersecurity skills. I suspect that not only Ukrainians are involved, but also foreign IT specialists and companies. The results are amazing. Hundreds of companies, thousands of specialists and hundreds of thousands of volunteers are involved." said Fedorov.
He stressed that in previous years, Ukraine was building the defense of the information space, but "never went on the offensive."
"In the days before the invasion, the Russian side carried out several extremely large attacks. When the invasion began, we counterattacked," Fedorov said.
The head of the Ministry of Digital Transformation said that he had many examples of successful cyberattacks and operations conducted by the Ukrainian side. However, he promised to tell the details after the war.
"For example, there are attacks on interfaces and network addresses of service providers and banks or government propaganda platforms. There were leaks from secret Russian databases and DDOS attacks," the minister added.
The Ministry is working to support the stable operation of the Internet in Ukraine during the war.
"Over the last two and a half years, we have built a very stable system, set up backups and distributed data centers around the world. For now, we can't imagine a scenario in which Russia could significantly sabotage our advanced digitalization. Ukraine also has hundreds of small and medium-sized Internet providers. These people are heroes who risk their lives to keep the operation going. Also, thanks to working with Ilon Mask, we have installed thousands of Starlink terminals throughout Ukraine," Fedorov added.
The minister said that the Ukrainian IT army was trying to tell the truth about the fighting to the Russians.
"We publish billions of targeted ads with true content on Internet platforms and through digital analysis we find that more and more people in Russia see the truth. We believe that one day a turning point will come and people in Russia will take action," Fedorov said.
On 10 March Fedorov reported that the new party of sets of the Starlink satellite Internet from Ilon Mask arrived to Ukraine.
The main companies that issue SSL and TLS security certificates for websites - GeoTrust, Sectigo, DigiCert, Thawte, Rapid - have stopped working in the market of the Russian Federation and Belarus.