full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022<\/a>. The drone and cruise missile onslaught caused US President Donald Trump to accuse Putin of going \u201cabsolutely crazy\u201d.<\/p>\nApps downloaded by Russian soldiers<\/p>\n
The probe found some of the military apps use Google\u2019s Firebase platform for storage. While they are not made publicly available on the company\u2019s app store Google Play, they can be downloaded to Android devices used by Russia\u2019s soldiers on the Ukrainian front line.<\/p>\n
Google did not respond to specific questions but did point to its use policy on its website. While this policy refers to blocking certain services in the Russian-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, it does not rule out use of its services within Russia itself.<\/p>\n
The policy states: \u201cGoogle Workspace is available in most countries and regions. However, Google restricts access to some of its business services in certain countries or regions, such as Crimea, Cuba, the so-called Donetsk People\u2019s Republic and Luhansk People\u2019s Republic, Iran, North Korea, and Syria.<\/p>\n
\u201cCertain Google services might be available in these countries or regions for personal use, but not for business or education use.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"At](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/SEI_253053404.jpg\")
At least 12 people were killed in the largest Russian air attack of the war that struck dozens of targets across Ukraine over the weekend (Photo: Ukrainian State Emergency Service Press Service\/AFP)<\/p>\n
Stryan will present his full findings at Nato\u2019s International Conference on Cyber Conflict in Estonia on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
He will call on companies including Amazon, Google and Microsoft to ensure Russian app developers are blocked from access to Western tech services and mission-critical data, or risk being \u201can accomplice to a war crime\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cThe providers of infrastructure, if doing that deliberately, knowingly and within some operational planning, they could be an accomplice to a war crime, if that is what resulted from such activity. But none of them, I think, is doing it deliberately. I believe it is happening inadvertently.\u201d<\/p>\n
Evidence was unearthed to show the Russian military apps\u2019 files are using data sourced from Western tech giants. <\/p>\n
Stryan\u2019s analysis revealed a heavy reliance of Russian military apps on data sourced from the international cloud platforms.<\/p>\n
AWS accounted for 33 per cent of the Russian internet addresses connected to the downloads, Google Cloud Platform represented 14 per cent, while Microsoft Azure accounted for 1.3 per cent.<\/p>\n
\u2018A moral obligation to act\u2019<\/p>\n
An AWS spokesman said: \u201cSince the start of the war, teams from AWS have been working with Ukraine government officials to help keep vital government services operating and support Ukrainian customers and partners to keep their applications secure.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have not previously been notified of these claims or provided with any specific examples; we\u2019ve asked the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine if they can provide further detail.\u201d<\/p>\n
Microsoft was asked for comment but had not responded at the time of publication.<\/p>\n
Former Conservative defence secretary Sir Grant Shapps backed Ukraine\u2019s call for the tech groups to prevent access to their services from Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt cannot be right that the same platforms we use to run our businesses and educate our children are also helping to guide missile strikes on Ukrainian cities,\u201d Shapps told The i Paper.<\/p>\n
\u201cBig tech has both the capability and the moral obligation to act.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cAmazon, Microsoft and Google should urgently review these claims and take immediate steps to block the developers involved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joseph Jarnecki, a research fellow in cyber and tech at the Royal United Services Institute, added: \u201cHopefully this is a wake-up call for technology companies to more effectively track what they\u2019re selling and to who.\u201d<\/p>\n
The UK Government was contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ukraine cyber security chief is calling on the world\u2019s leading tech groups to ensure Russian app developers are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[324,2000,299,867,507,2046,332,7661,657,333],"class_list":{"0":"post-133320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-amazon","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-google","12":"tag-microsoft","13":"tag-putin","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","16":"tag-ukraine","17":"tag-vladimir-putin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114574330929392910","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}