How Amazon saved Ukraine from the digital crisis

A week before the Russian army invaded Ukraine, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law that would allow valuable data from the government and private sector to be moved to the cloud.

That was an important, even vital decision, as the 31-year-old Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation later said.

Mykhailo Fedorov is deadly serious when he talks about the collaboration with the American tech company Amazon and its subsidiary Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Amazon has been working closely with Ukraine since February 24, 2022, the day Russia launched its invasion. In particular, it was about rescuing vital government, tax, banking and property records that were vulnerable to destruction and misuse and prevent them from falling into the hands of Russian invaders.

How did the data get out of the country?

In specially protected, suitcase-like storage units from Amazon called “Snowball Edge”. These are powerful solid-state data carriers (SSD) that, unlike conventional hard drives, have no moving parts and are therefore insensitive to impact, shock and vibration.

Exporting via the internet, i.e. uploading to foreign data centers, was not an option for a number of reasons. First, Russian hackers attacked Ukraine’s communication networks. But above all, the amounts of data were simply too large: according to a current report from the “Los Angeles Times”, it was possible to secure “10 million gigabytes” (= 10 petabytes). This means uploading to the AWS data centers scattered around the world and storing in the cloud.

How important was this action?

Fedorov described it as virtually all of Ukraine’s “critical information infrastructure”. This data was “core to the functioning of the economy, tax system, banks and government”.

The data also includes real estate: keeping it safe prevents (or reverses at a later stage) theft of Ukrainian homes, businesses and land.

For months, the Amazon specialists helped migrate about 30 Ukrainian government offices and other state institutions to the cloud, putting them out of reach of the Russian invading forces.

Who put this together?

Amazon has been playing Santa Claus for Ukraine since February, the Los Angeles Times summarizes the commitment. The US retail giant is delivering planeloads of goods, including blankets, sanitary napkins, diapers, groceries and toys, to the war-torn country and to refugees in Poland and other parts of Europe.

According to Amazon, it has so far invested $75 million in support for Ukraine, including data recovery using SSD cases.

Fedorov, who appeared before an audience in December at an AWS-hosted tech conference in Las Vegas, described the data recovery as “priceless.”

A senior Amazon executive from Britain should be credited for the bailout, which is unique in the computer age. Liam Maxwell holds the title of Director of Government Transformation at AWS.

Previously, he was the UK Government’s top technology adviser and was one of the key figures responsible for a cloud-first strategy.

On the day of the Russian invasion, the busy tech executive met the Ukrainian ambassador in London for lunch. There they agreed to migrate the Ukrainian government systems to the cloud. Result: the authorities were able to continue working during the war – regardless of the damage Russia had inflicted.

On November 29, Fedorov and Maxwell signed a memorandum agreeing to continue cooperation until 2023.

Why is Amazon doing this and who benefits?

Watson asked OpenAI’s artificial intelligence (AI) what motives the for-profit American company Amazon might pursue with its aid to Ukraine.

The AI ​​replied that Amazon could have several motives to help secure the Ukrainian data:

Editor’s conclusion: The successful migration of Ukrainian government and economic data to the Amazon cloud is a win-win situation – for all those directly involved, as well as for Western democracies. The collapse of Ukraine must be prevented at all costs: because it would cause (immeasurable) additional suffering for the affected population. And because the refugee flow after a social collapse could destabilize all of Western Europe.

Sources