One side is the logistics infrastructure, which has been running at full speed since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February. Huge amounts of goods, including blankets, hygiene sets, diapers, groceries and toys, flow through Amazon’s delivery routes and warehouses towards Eastern Europe – and also to various aid centers in Poland and other countries where many war refugees have to be cared for.
But what is almost more important are those things that are being shipped in the other direction out of Ukraine, reports the New York Times now. At stake are vast amounts of government, tax, banking and property data that can be destroyed and misused if Russian attackers get their hands on it. Amazon employees have been working closely with Ukrainian government agencies since February 24 to get critical data out of the country.
High investments
It is often not possible here to simply use an Internet connection – because these are sometimes too unstable, sometimes too insecure for the information in question. That’s why Amazon employees with hard drives the size of a suitcase – called “Snowball Edge” – keep traveling to Ukraine, backing up the data there and driving them to Amazon’s European data centers, where the information is kept safe. “This is the most technologically advanced war in human history,” said Mykhailo Fedorov, 31-year-old Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation. He referred not only to weapons, but also to data. “Amazon Web Services management made a decision that saved the Ukrainian government and economy,” he said.
According to the newspaper’s research, Amazon has so far invested around 75 million dollars in its commitment in Ukraine. Fedorov described the secured data as “priceless”. Because they are of central importance for the functioning of the economy, the tax system, the banks and the government as a whole. And in case of doubt also to clarify ownership – which regularly leads to problems after wars and changing administrations in occupied and again liberated areas. So far, around 10 million gigabytes of data are said to have been brought out of the country with the Snowball Edge systems.
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