The Vodafone Ukraine mobile network operator has asked for repair teams to be allowed to enter Donbas to repair communications networks, the company’s spokeswoman Victoria Ruban said.
“We have appealed to all those responsible, including the Ukrainian administrations in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, the [Joint] Coordination and Control Center, and the OSCE mission: please let our repair team into the grey zone to repair the damaged line. So far, no results. The only hope is that we have not received a definitive ‘no’ to our requests. But we would very much like a decision to be made as quickly as possible,” Ruban wrote on Facebook on January 15.
More than a third of the cellular operator’s equipment in the breakaway areas of the Donbas region is currently out of order, the operator said.
The Mass Communications Ministry of separatist-held territories said earlier that Vodafone Ukraine’s service in the separatist-held Donbas was lost on January 11 due to a fiber optic cable rupture near the village of Olenivka in separatist-held territories of Donetsk region. Vodafone Ukraine said it cannot repair damage if the cable is damaged in an area not controlled by Kyiv.
