Sumy oblast left without TV or radio signal due to Russian shelling

The Russian troops carried out missile and air strikes on the radio facilities in the Sumy oblast, reports the Sumy Oblast Military Administration.

The shelling temporarily disabled the TV and radio transmitters in Sumy, Shostka, Bilopylla and Trostyanka, clarifies the OMA.

"Due to the damage, part of the oblast is (temporarily) unable to receive Ukrainian TV and radio signals. There may be problems with mobile connection," OMA noted.

The head of the Sumy oblast military administration, Volodymyr Artyukh, urged the people not to panic and to switch to alternative communication channels.

"The enemy is waging an informational war, destroying the Ukrainian broadcasting. We will not let them win. The impact is currently being assessed and restoration plans are already in development. Do not give in to panic and provocations. Switch to alternative means of communication, only trust verified sources of information," he said.

In her comment to the regional IMI representative, the representative of the National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting in the Sumy oblast, Larysa Yakubenko reported that Russia was deliberately targeting such objects.

"The enemy is purposefully shelling the critical infrastructure of the Sumy oblast and civilian objects, including the information infrastructure. Namely, this year, the feeders on the Druzhba tower were damaged by the early March shelling. The day before yesterday, on March 12, it was the ones on the Krasnopillya tower. Both towers were built last year as part of the Roadmap for the Development of the Sumy Oblast Information Landscape," she said, adding that the repair work was done by specialists from the Sumy Technical Center at the Kharkiv branch of the BRTC, and that the broadcasting has already been restored.

As the IMI reported, the Russian troops struck the television infrastructure facilities in the Kharkiv oblast with drones en masse on the night of March 14.

In the two years of the full-scale invasion, the IMI recorded 16 cases of Russians shelling TV towers, which are civilian objects. This caused television and radio broadcasting in nine regions of Ukraine to disappear completely or temporarily.