Ukraine is struggling to maintain lines of communication open throughout the conflict. Thus, many engineers from the country's phone companies have deployed to ensure that citizens and government officials can continue communicating despite the frequent Russian missile and drone attacks.
Engineers' Role
According to ABC News, engineers routinely work around the clock to maintain or restore phone service, often risking their lives by crossing minefields.
Generators were ramped up to keep cellular towers operational after Russian attacks knocked out the power they usually rely on.
Yuriy Dugnist, an engineer for the Ukrainian telecom company Kyivstar, told the news outlet, "I know our guys - my colleagues - are very exhausted, but they're motivated by the fact that we are doing an important thing."
Dugrist and his coworkers gave a peek into their new daily routines.
This involves using an app on their mobile phones to check which of the dozens of phone towers in the capital region were getting electricity during breaks from the controlled blackouts.
These outages are being employed to preserve energy or from the generators that kick in to give backup power.
Before making their rounds, the crew stops at a gas station to fill eight 20-liter (5.3 gallons) jerrycans with diesel fuel.
This is for a massive tank beneath a generator that transfers power up a 50-meter (160-foot) cell tower in a suburban community without electricity for days.
It is one of several Ukrainian cities where electricity has been erratic at best since Russia launched a series of deadly airstrikes on the country's infrastructure, including power facilities, during the last few weeks.
The Situation
Reports indicate that after Russia's invasion on Feb. 24, millions were forced to flee the nation. At the time, Kyivstar emerged as the biggest of Ukraine's three major mobile phone carriers, with roughly 26 million users.
In the years before the invasion, diesel generators were placed at the base of the mobile phone towers, although they were seldom used.
On the bright side, numerous Western nations have volunteered to provide generators and transformers to Ukraine to assist the country recover from Russia's attack.
Kyivstar sent out 15 teams of engineers at once and called in "all our reserves" to fix the 2,500 mobile stations in their service region after emergency blackouts caused by Russian attacks on Nov. 23, as reported by Tech Times.
When the Russian soldiers withdrew from Irpin, a neighborhood north of Kyiv, earlier this year, Dugnist recalls dashing to the scene of a wrecked cell tower before the Ukrainian minesweepers came to deliver the all-clear signal.
By the President
With the crisis in its tenth month, the pressure on Ukraine's mobile phone networks has allegedly increased the cost of satellite phone options like Elon Musk's Starlink system, which the Ukrainian military has employed.
As a result of the severe damage done to infrastructure in Ukraine last week, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called a meeting of key government officials to discuss the necessary repairs and supplies to restore the country's power and communications.
He emphasized a need to keep communication lines open, saying, "Special attention is paid to the communication system."
