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A new agreement between the two countries will see Romania provide support in restoring Ukrainian infrastructure compromised by Russian aggression
Ukraine and Romania have signed a new cooperation agreement that will see the countries collaborate on cybersecurity measures, the development of 5G, and the restoration of Ukraine’s connectivity infrastructure.
The deal, signed by the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and the Ministry of Research, Innovation, and Digitalisation of Romania, will see the partners:
- Restore and upgrade digital infrastructure affected by Russian aggression
- Provide internet coverage to remote and hard-to-reach regions;
- Improve the resilience and security of information and communication technologies;
- Strengthen cyber defence of national networks and digital infrastructure;
- Develop cloud infrastructure for public e-services;
- Introduce 5G technologies in Ukraine and develop 5G corridors between the borders of Ukraine and Romania.
“We agreed on the first steps — increasing the stability of Ukrainian internet networks, developing 5G corridors between the borders of Ukraine and Romania, and Ukraine’s participation in EU financial support programmes,” said Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov.
The agreement sees Romania join a long list of countries that are directly supporting Ukraine’s in the cybersphere. Last month, ten nations (Estonia, the Netherlands, Canada, Poland, France, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, the US, and the UK) launched the Tallinn Mechanism – a collective strategy for measuring Ukraine’s cybersecurity needs and allocating resources to meet them from participating nations.
Each country’s participation in this mechanism is backed by local tech companies and non-governmental organisations, as well as significant government funding. Estonia, the country spearheading the initiative, has pledged to invest €500,000 in the Mechanism by 2024.
And this additional support cannot come soon enough. Last month saw Russia launch its most severe cyber assault on Ukraine since the war began, resulting in a mass network outage for Ukraine’s largest mobile and internet service provider Kyivstar.
According to Kyivstar, the attack wiped thousands of the company’s systems, as well as potentially gaining access to some level of customer information, such as phone location data.
“This attack is a big message, a big warning, not only to Ukraine, but for the whole Western world to understand that no one is actually untouchable,” said llia Vitiuk, head of the Security Service of Ukraine’s cybersecurity department.
Initial investigations show that the hacker group had gained access to Kyivstar’s systems from at last May last year.
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