Infrastructural imperialism is a form of expansion in which a state or coalition seeks to dominate the transportation, energy, and communication networks of other nations or regions. This control can be achieved through economic coercion, political influence, or outright military force.
One historical example is the British Empire’s construction of railways and canals across India, Africa, and Asia during the 19th and 20th centuries. These networks enabled Britain to transport goods and troops efficiently while exploiting the natural resources of its colonies.
Another case is the establishment of the transatlantic telegraph link between the United States and Europe in the late 19th century. This connection reinforced American dominance and interests on the European continent, facilitating the spread of U.S. culture and ideas.
More recently, a comparable process of infrastructural imperialism has been evident in Latin America, where U.S. investments in energy projects—such as hydroelectric complexes and oil and gas fields—have allowed for the control of resources while shaping the political landscape.
Over the last decade, China has ramped up its efforts to challenge the United States’ role as a global hegemon by investing heavily in infrastructure across various African nations. From financing and constructing railroads to building ports and power plants, it has made significant strides in countries like Kenya, Ethiopia, and Tanzania.
While the infamous history of Western colonial conquest is widely debated and rigorously studied, the colonial settler nature of the Russian Empire remains curiously overlooked by many observers. It is striking that, even as Russia russifies occupied territories in Ukraine, seizes grain, sunflower seeds, and art collections, its officials invoke the anti-colonial legacy of the twentieth century without a hint of irony.
It is typical for Russian authorities to deny the country’s colonial past. However, throughout its history, as new territories were annexed, Russian authorities systematically destroyed and russified indigenous peoples while extracting natural resources. Unlike Western empires, Russia did not colonize overseas territories but instead expanded into neighboring regions by land.
The construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad in the 19th century is a textbook example of how the Russian Empire used infrastructure to extend its influence and tighten its grip on newly conquered territories (1). This vast railroad network, which stretched across Siberia to connect Russia with the Pacific Ocean, took more than a decade to complete and cost tens of thousands of workers their lives.
This massive project pursued not only economic but also political goals. It was designed to expand the empire and bolster its position in Asia. The railroad gave Russia the ability to quickly and efficiently move troops and goods to Eastern Siberia and the Far East, cementing its control over these regions.
Infrastructural imperialism is a key component of Russia’s contemporary foreign policy, which merges economic and military strategies. This is particularly evident in its approach to fossil fuels. Russia’s economy heavily depends on the extraction, processing, and export of oil, gas, and coal. Oil exports alone account for 45% of the country’s total export revenues and roughly one-third of its federal budget. Before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia was the world’s largest producer of natural gas, with Gazprom holding a monopoly over the European market.
Consider the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines. Before February 2022, these projects could have been viewed as purely economic ventures. However, the full-scale war revealed their deep entanglement with Russia’s military objectives.
Nord Stream 2, designed to transport natural gas to Europe, was completed just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This timing is unlikely to be coincidental when one considers Ukraine’s long-standing role as the primary transit route for Russian natural gas since Soviet times.
For three decades after the Soviet Union’s collapse, Russia used a combination of blackmail and coercion to try to seize control of Ukraine’s gas transportation system. In the early 2000s, Ukrainian media dubbed this conflict the “gas wars.” Even then, Russia employed aggressive measures, such as closing pipeline valves and cutting off gas supplies during Ukraine’s freezing winters, when temperatures often drop well below zero.
Nord Stream 1 and 2 were intended to serve as alternative routes for natural gas supplies, providing Russia with significant strategic leverage. By bypassing Ukraine, these pipelines enabled Russia to exclude it from the supply chain and reduce the economic and logistical costs of a potential military takeover. Following the full-scale invasion, Russia employed gas blackmail to push its political agenda on European governments, aiming to undermine their support for Ukraine—particularly the provision of weapons essential for its defense.
Russia’s ambition to seize Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea, including Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odessa, and others, exemplifies overt infrastructural imperialism. These ports, along with their cargo-handling infrastructure, are strategically vital for trade and security in the Black Sea region. Gaining control over them would allow Russia to dominate sea routes and restrict other nations’ access to the Black Sea.
The naval blockade of Ukrainian ports—key to Ukraine’s exports and imports prior to the invasion—the cancellation of the “grain deal” in the summer of 2023, and the systematic shelling of port infrastructure are integral to Russia’s strategy. By imposing this blockade, Russia not only gains control over the flow of goods to and from Ukraine but also inflicts severe damage on the Ukrainian economy.
By seizing the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, in 2022, Russia has not only deprived Ukraine of its main source of electricity, but is also using nuclear blackmail to pressure countries in the region.
The destruction of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric dam by the Russian army was not only a blow to Ukraine’s energy industry. It caused enormous damage to agriculture in the arid southern regions of Ukraine. These regions lost their source of water for irrigating crops for years to come. Not to mention the enormous environmental costs of this planned disaster.
Russia is using its military presence in Ukraine to gain control of key infrastructure such as power plants, railroads, ports, airfields, oil storage facilities, and communication lines. Thus, in Russian infrastructural imperialism economic and military methods are closely intertwined.
Digital Infrastructure as a Field of Control
Russian occupation forces have made concerted efforts to dominate Ukraine’s infrastructure, including the physical networks of digital communications such as the internet, mobile services, and television and radio broadcasting.
Long before the full-scale invasion in 2022, Russia leveraged the internet and digital communications to expand its influence in Ukraine. Troll factories and bot farms operating on online platforms have been a well-known component of the Russian authorities’ toolkit. Even before the scandal of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election brought these tactics into global focus, Ukraine was a testing ground for such manipulative technologies.
In late 2013, under pressure from Russian authorities, President Yanukovych abruptly abandoned Ukraine’s course toward economic integration with the European Union. During this period, Russian political technologists, in collaboration with Paul Manafort, assisted Yanukovych in suppressing opposition forces. A coordinated disinformation campaign across the internet and traditional media played a significant role in these efforts.
In 2014, following Yanukovych’s ouster, Russia exploited the ensuing instability to annex Crimea and support separatist movements in eastern Ukraine. A pivotal moment in Russia’s infrastructural imperialism was the construction of the Kerch Bridge, designed to integrate the occupied Crimean peninsula more firmly into Russian control. The 19-kilometer bridge connects Kerch in Crimea to the Taman Peninsula in Russia’s Krasnodar region, spanning the narrow strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. This strategic project not only reinforced transportation, economic, and military ties with Crimea but also provided Russia with more direct access to Ukraine’s southern borders.
These acts of war and territorial aggression were paralleled by operations in the digital realm. Between 2014 and 2023, Russia systematically blocked access to Ukrainian and international media, social networks, and other online resources in all Ukrainian territories under its temporary occupation. Simultaneously, it inundated local populations with propaganda and disinformation, consolidating its grip in cyberspace alongside physical control.
Mapping cyberspace—a kind of digital geography—offers valuable insights into geopolitical dynamics. By analyzing how Russia manipulates the digital geography of the internet to its advantage, we can gain a clearer understanding of on-the-ground realities and anticipate the aggressor’s future plans.
Reconfiguring the routing of computer networks across an entire region has been a gradual process. Before Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014, all internet traffic from the peninsula was routed through mainland Ukraine. Following the annexation, Ukrainian telecommunications companies were either forced to leave the region or withdrew voluntarily. However, Crimea’s integration into Russia’s internet infrastructure was not immediate—it took up to three years.
After occupying Crimea, the Russian state telecommunications company Rostelecom established an underwater communication line, laying a cable along the bottom of the Kerch Strait to connect Crimea directly to Russia. On the ground, internet services were managed by Miranda Media, a newly formed subsidiary of Rostelecom. This effort aimed to centralize Crimea’s internet routing, gradually redirecting data flows through Russian-controlled infrastructure. A similar process unfolded in the separatist-held regions of Donbas, under de facto Russian control since 2014. Over time, direct internet connections between these regions and the rest of Ukraine were severed, further isolating them digitally while integrating them into Russia’s network framework.
Russia’s takeover of internet infrastructure in Crimea and eastern Ukraine illustrates how internet routes, infrastructure, and network topology are deeply intertwined with geopolitics. It serves as a clear example of how imperialism operates at the level of digital networks.
Beyond restructuring network control, Russia has also employed malicious attacks on Ukraine’s digital infrastructure. Between 2015 and 2016, Ukrainian banks, government offices, transportation companies, train stations, and energy infrastructure were targeted in devastating cyberattacks. Malware infections disrupted countless systems, leaving millions of Ukrainians to bear the consequences: cash registers in thousands of stores ceased functioning, preventing payments, and over 200,000 people in one region were left without electricity for hours. Investigations revealed that hacker groups linked to Russian intelligence were behind these attacks.
The full-scale invasion in 2022 marked an escalation in Russia’s assault on Ukraine’s digital infrastructure, with destruction increasing exponentially. This time, physical internet infrastructure was not only attacked but also seized, dismantled, or outright destroyed. Mobile operators and internet service providers became key targets for Russian forces.
However, Russia’s initial efforts to sever Ukraine’s internet connectivity overnight largely failed. This resilience can be attributed to the historical decentralization of Ukraine’s internet infrastructure. For much of its development, Ukraine’s government had little direct involvement in its operation. Instead, the network grew organically, with thousands of small, independent internet providers. Many were so localized that their services didn’t extend beyond a single municipality or city district.
This decentralization fostered a vast network of traffic exchange points between local and backbone ISPs, creating a built-in “safety margin” for Ukraine’s internet infrastructure, and making it far more difficult to disrupt the country’s connectivity entirely.
Efforts to disrupt Ukraine’s connectivity began almost immediately. In the first hours of the invasion, hacker groups linked to Russia disabled tens of thousands of satellite internet modems across Ukraine and Europe, cutting off thousands of Ukrainians from online access in a devastating blow. Shortly after, Russia launched guided missile strikes on television towers, including Kyiv’s largest, aiming to shut down Ukrainian broadcasting.
As Russian forces gained control of significant territory in southern Ukraine, the region’s digital infrastructure and communications networks also fell under their authority. In areas like the Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions, occupying forces sought to sever connections with the rest of Ukraine, replicating the approach used in Crimea years earlier.
In the war’s first weeks, hundreds of mobile operators’ base stations were damaged, with antennas shot through, equipment cabinets destroyed by grenades, and optical cables severed. Widespread power outages added to the challenges, as transformer substations were targeted and destroyed by tank fire and rockets, leaving countless communities without electricity. Ukrainian mobile operators faced increasingly complex challenges in maintaining network functionality.
The Russian military also actively suppressed signals from Ukraine’s cellular networks to block local residents from sharing real-time information about troop movements with Ukrainian forces.
Backbone traffic transmission channels suffered significant damage due to hostilities and shelling. While traffic could be rerouted through remaining channels, the network’s safety margin was not unlimited. The impossibility of repairing damaged lines during active combat left subscribers in temporarily occupied areas with severely reduced connection speeds. Additionally, Russian forces frequently looted equipment and machinery from the offices of Ukrainian ISPs, compounding the challenges for maintaining communications in affected regions.
Digital Infrastructure Under Occupation
The actions of the occupying forces can be clearly analyzed through the case of Kherson, a regional hub in southern Ukraine that was under Russian control for six months before its liberation by the Ukrainian army.
Immediately following the occupation of Kherson on March 3, 2022, Russian forces seized the city’s television tower and began broadcasting Russian channels. The occupation administration disseminated propaganda, framing the invasion as a “liberation.” Initially, Ukrainian TV channels were still accessible in Kherson, but their broadcasts were overlaid with distorted Russian dubbing. Soon after, radio signals were jammed, and internet and mobile phone services were severed. Russian forces installed a fiber-optic cable from Crimea, forcing local internet providers to route traffic through Russian-controlled infrastructure.
This redirection of web traffic enabled pervasive digital censorship and mass surveillance. Russian authorities monitored communications, controlled the dissemination of news, and spread propaganda. According to some accounts, censorship in the occupied territories was even stricter than within Russia itself, where military censorship is heavily enforced.
Residents in the Kherson region lost access to Ukrainian news outlets and key online platforms, including Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, the Google search engine, and the Viber messenger. Russia also seized control of mobile communications, introducing a local mobile operator using numbers with the Russian country code “+7.” As in Crimea, the Russian telecommunications company Miranda Media facilitated the technical operations of this takeover.
Surveillance was widespread, and even a suspicion of pro-Ukrainian sentiment often led to brutal repression. Arbitrary detentions, torture, and killings were common, targeting those who showed any visible dissent or disagreement with the occupiers’ policies.
As the Russian army retreated from Kherson in the fall of 2022, it employed scorched-earth tactics against the city’s infrastructure. Russian forces destroyed the television tower, telecommunications center, and power distribution facilities. Russian soldiers mined roads, severed power lines, and demolished cell towers, leaving Kherson without communications, heat, water, or electricity at the time of evacuation.
Imagine living in Kherson, a city of over 300,000 people before the war came, located in southern Ukraine. On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion. By February 28, Russian forces had entered the city. Small local self-defense units, composed of poorly armed volunteers, attempted to resist the occupation. Their efforts, however, were no match for the heavily armed Russian army. It wiped out one group in an alley in the city center, shooting people from large-caliber machine guns.
Initially, Kherson’s residents protested the occupation in significant numbers. To suppress dissent, Russia deployed its National Guard—a force notorious for quelling protests within Russia itself. The National Guard used violence against demonstrators, raided homes to arrest activists, and systematically targeted the most vocal opponents. Many residents were tortured, intimidated, detained without cause, or disappeared entirely.
Intercity public transportation stopped operating. Trains and buses were no longer in service, and all entry points to the city were heavily guarded. Even leaving Kherson by private vehicle became a dangerous and arduous process, with multiple checkpoints where cars and individuals were subjected to exhaustive searches.
The banking system also collapsed. ATMs were emptied within the first day as panicked residents withdrew cash, and bank branches remained closed. In the early days of the occupation, internet and mobile phone services functioned intermittently, enabling residents to stay informed and contact loved ones. However, connection speeds slowed over time, outages became frequent, and the occupation authorities blocked Ukrainian websites. Accessing Ukrainian news required VPNs.
After about a month, communications from Ukrainian mobile operators and internet providers stopped altogether. Fixed-line internet services were cut off, as were mobile networks. Russian occupation television channels became the sole source of information, inundating residents with propaganda. In some areas, it was possible to pick up a faint signal from Ukrainian mobile networks, and people gathered in these spots to try to contact relatives in other parts of the country.
When the internet connection was finally restored in Kherson, residents discovered it was no longer Ukrainian. The connection now ran through a cable routed via Crimea, placing users under Russia’s strict digital laws.
In Russia, internet regulation is far harsher than in Ukraine. Roskomnadzor, the Russian state censorship agency, has the authority to block any website deemed undesirable by the authorities. Personal communication was also at heightened risk, as Russian security services monitored and filtered internet activity at multiple levels. This surveillance made accessing Ukrainian or global news sites—or even contacting people in unoccupied parts of Ukraine—dangerous. Since local internet providers had access to residents’ home addresses, using the internet from home was particularly unsafe. Purchasing a SIM card for mobile internet also became fraught with risks. Unlike in Ukraine, where SIM cards could be bought anonymously in supermarkets, in the occupied territories, buyers had to provide personal data like home address and submit a copy of their ID.
When Ukrainian Armed Forces pushed the Russian army out of Kherson after six months of occupation, the retreating forces sought to inflict maximum damage on the city’s digital infrastructure. Power lines and cell towers were mined and blown up. The destruction was extensive.
Before the occupation, Kherson had 88 cellular base stations operated by Kyivstar, one of Ukraine’s leading mobile operators. By November 2022, immediately after the city was liberated, only four remained operational. Even those were reliant on generators, as the city’s centralized electricity supply had been destroyed. The central square of Kherson became a lifeline for communication as hundreds of residents gathered there daily to access one of the few functional base stations.
Undermining Energy Infrastructure and Network Control
In the fall of 2022, Russia launched a coordinated campaign to devastate Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Hundreds of cruise missiles and kamikaze drones targeted thermal power plants, electrical substations, transformers, and high-voltage transmission lines. These attacks caused widespread blackouts, disrupting Ukraine’s unified power grid and leaving millions of people without electricity for extended periods.
The loss of power had cascading effects. Homes were left without heat, water, and lighting, while communications infrastructure also suffered. Cell phone towers, reliant on electricity, were inoperable for days at a time. While many towers were equipped with batteries, these could only sustain operations for a few hours. As power outages became more frequent, internet service providers struggled to deliver connectivity to homes. Generators were deployed to keep networks running, but the situation remained precarious.
For individual users, the consequences were immediate. In urban areas, power outages meant the disappearance of landline internet, as modems and routers lacked electricity. Mobile internet, while a temporary alternative, could only function until the backup batteries at cellular base stations were depleted. Even then, connection speeds plummeted due to the surge in demand during outages.
The scale of disruption was significant. According to NetBlocks, a global service that monitors internet outages, Ukraine experienced widespread connectivity losses after nearly every major missile strike in the fall and winter of 2022.
To mitigate these challenges, Starlink satellite internet terminals became a critical tool. Mobile operators used these terminals to bypass damaged transport networks and restore some level of connectivity to their subscribers. This technology provided a lifeline, helping Ukraine maintain communication even amidst relentless attacks.
With download speeds of up to 200 Mbps, a single Starlink terminal can support connectivity for several hundred users. However, even this solution has limitations. In communities without power, generators must be installed to operate the Starlink terminals, requiring regular refueling to sustain their functionality. Despite these logistical challenges, Starlink proved invaluable as a temporary measure during efforts to restore mobile service.
Looking ahead, there are strong indications that Russia will escalate its campaign of targeting energy infrastructure during the winter of 2024-2025. Kamikaze drone attacks are already intensifying, with 30–40 drones launched over Ukraine nightly. Ukrainian military officials anticipate that these assaults will escalate into large-scale missile strikes, posing renewed threats to energy supplies and, consequently, digital communications, including cellular networks and internet services.
The disruptions to Ukraine’s communication infrastructure can be analyzed through the framework of network control, a concept introduced by scholar Rita Zajácz in her 2019 book on the history of global communications. Zajácz defines network control as the ability to regulate territory, capital, and technology to ensure the continuous flow of information for one party while denying it to its opponent.
Zajácz identifies two levels of network control: tactical and structural. At the tactical level, the Russian military’s seizure of Ukrainian territory allowed it to dominate the communications infrastructure in occupied regions. This included controlling mobile networks, internet routing, and local broadcasting. At the structural level, which involves influence over policies and the narratives tied to communication systems, Russia’s efforts extend beyond Ukraine. Russia is actively working to gain influence within international institutions that regulate global communications.
One illustrative case of Russia’s influence on global communications governance involves the Geneva-based International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations agency. A year into the full-scale invasion, the ITU released a report documenting the devastating effects of the war on Ukraine’s telecommunications infrastructure. The report detailed extensive destruction caused by Russian forces and chronicled cyberattacks on Ukrainian IT systems over six months. While this document was both significant and insightful, its release went largely unnoticed.
The report’s delayed publication and lack of promotion raised concerns. Reuters discovered the report only much later, emphasizing that it had been “quietly posted in a corner of the ITU website”, without a direct link or accompanying announcements. The only way to locate the document was to contact the ITU directly and request its whereabouts.
This lack of visibility led industry experts to question whether the ITU was reluctant to share the findings publicly. Reuters’ observations, along with the obscure release of such an important report, may reflect the structural level of network control. Using Rita Zajácz’s framework, this situation exemplifies how Russia might exert influence within global institutions like the ITU to downplay narratives unfavorable to its geopolitical interests.
By potentially hindering the dissemination of critical information, Russia’s actions at this level extend beyond physical infrastructure control. They aim to shape the policies, practices, and priorities of international organizations, thereby advancing its agenda on a broader stage.
Russian revanchist imperialism extends far beyond territorial expansion and regional dominance. At both the tactical and structural levels, it encompasses the takeover of Ukraine’s digital landscape and the crafting of narratives to justify and conceal its colonial ambitions. Through the strategic manipulation of digital spaces and global communications policies, Russia seeks to solidify its geopolitical influence. It is crucial to remember that these efforts are integral components of Russia’s broader criminal war against a sovereign nation.
