Occupants' lair in a container and a book by Dumas: What "adventures" lifecell faces while restoring communication in the liberated areas

Mind asked mobile operators' engineers to tell about their "daily" work in the frontline areas. We publish the story of lifecell first. The company's experts tell how they restore communication in the liberated towns of Kharkiv Oblast. For safety reasons, operators do not disclose the identities and faces of their engineers.

On the start of works after demining

We go to carry out repair works accompanied by the Emergencies employees and no sooner than we receive permission from the military. All infrastructure facilities in the liberated territories of Kharkiv province and the entrances to them are densely mined, so first the sappers work. And only then we begin to inspect and repair our equipment.

On the thefts of the occupiers and the cost of fuel

The biggest difficulties in restoring communication in Kharkiv Oblast were significant damage and theft of equipment by the occupiers, as well as the lack of power supply. One generator requires about 60 litres of fuel a day, and it is very difficult to find it in Kharkiv Oblast, and even if you are lucky, the price is many times higher than the average cost in Ukraine.

On the vandalism and "housing" of the world's second strongest army 

Shevchenkove is one of the first settlements in the area where we restored communication after it was liberated. One cell tower was quickly restored using Starlink equipment.

At the second CT, the equipment was damaged, literally torn out of the container and scattered around. Invaders arranged a home for themselves inside the container – they placed a bed, a table, a wardrobe and even read a Dumas novel there. Accordingly, we could not restore this location quickly, and only one of our cell towers operates in Shevchenkove so far.

On the outside-the-box solutions to restore communication

In Izium we had one cell tower installed on a TV tower, the upper part of which burned down and fell to the ground. The container with equipment below was also completely smashed. The tower itself instead of four-sided guy wiring now has only three guy lines and is quite unstable. To restore communication as quickly as possible, we installed our aerials on the surviving part of the tower at a low height and set a mobile cell tower to replace the destroyed container as a temporary solution.

Also we restored communication on another site  in Izium  which had not been so damaged. We installed Starlink, replaced some cables and now it works. Meanwhile, we are trying to restore our transmission there, repair the optics to be able to provide stable communication.

In Balakliya, we have already removed Starlink and rebuilt out channels. Now Starlink is available in Pechenigy, Velyka Babka, Shevchenkove, Vovchansk, Kupyansk, Prykolotne and Izium.

On the general "pattern" of the destroyed and restored

During the occupation of Kharkiv Oblast, Russian troops destroyed and damaged more than 130 lifecell cell towers that provided communication.

Now 81% of our cell towers have already been operating in the province. After the territories in Kharkiv Oblast had been liberated, lifecell connection was restored in Balakliya, Vovchansk, Izium, Kupyansk, Prykolotne, Shevchenkove, Velyka Babka, Verbivka, Vovchanski Khutory, Gatyshche, Gogyne, Dibrova, Donetske, Kapytolivka, Kramarivka, Lyman, Lyptsi, Lozove, Malakhove, Mykolaivka, Mykhailivka, Ogirtseve, Pechenigy, Pymonivka, Symynivka, Synelnykove, Snizhkivka, Tykhe, Tsegelne, Yurivka. Thanks to this, not only did the coverage appear in these settlements, but also in the surrounding villages. 

In other settlements of the oblast, demining continues, following which our engineers will repair the equipment.