"We will appear more and more on these TV channels precisely for the sake of our citizens of Ukraine who live on temporarily occupied Ukrainian land, to show our information, our President," says cyber security expert Yehor Aushev. 

From the first minutes of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine experienced an onslaught of fakes.

Citizens en masse hunted for mythical marks.

And the anti-terrorist forces shot at official vehicles that were allegedly captured by the enemy DRG.

"We were given relevant information in the group that sabotage and intelligence groups were moving under the guise of "ambulance" doctors.

The same was said about the military.

As a result of the processing of this information, there were skirmishes.

Even the police of the Kyiv region were fired upon, some cars were fired upon," recalls Andrii Nebytov, head of the National Police in the Kyiv region. 

Enemy disinformation was spread by agents recruited by Russia.

In order to calculate them, Ukrainian IT people created a special application.

"If a person withdrew Russian rubles, we created such a bot that simply informed the Security Service of Ukraine.

Hundreds of such people were detained.

In one place in Dnipro in the first week, we detained seven such teams," says Yehor Aushev. 

"We have no choice.

We do what we know how to do.

If we don't know something, we learn very quickly," says Ivan Petukhov, president of the Adamant group of IT companies. 

Ivan Petukhov is the head of a company that operates government websites.

It monitors cyber attacks across the country 24 hours a day.

The largest of them occurred during a full-scale invasion.

"At four o'clock in the morning, together with shelling, DDoS attacks began.

The volume of attacks was tens, hundreds of times greater than anything that had happened before.

It was hundreds of gigabits per second, - recalls Ivan.

- If communications were blocked, if ISPs, communication operators went down - that's it, cover.

At that moment, the address of both the President and the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada had to be conveyed to the people immediately.

That was the most important thing." 

"Imagine: there is a military invasion, and we have no internet, communication, ATMs are not working.

People cannot buy food, pharmacies do not work.

People would not be able to get real information about what is happening in the country.

This was the goal of the Russians," notes Nataliya Tkachuk, head of the information and cyber security service of the NSDC Apparatus. 

"There were massive cyberattacks on the telephone devices of law enforcement officers," recalls Iryna Pryanishnikova, head of the press service of the Kyiv region police.

- We received messages like this: switch to our side, or you seem to switch to the mobile operator of the aggressor country." 

"Such destabilization is precisely the effect on citizens: everything, we were captured, everyone surrendered, there is no President, there is no government, everyone has left.

So that we cannot unite and give a worthy rebuff to our enemy", Andrii Nebytov emphasizes. 

The brain center of digital defense has become the national coordination center of cyber security at the NSDC.

"We united the main structures responsible for cyber security: the Security Service of Ukraine, State Special Communications, intelligence agencies, the Ministry of Defense, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the National Bank of Ukraine, the cyber police," Natalia Tkachuk says about the first hours of cyber defense.

- Specialists of all these bodies worked day and night, 24/7, to repel cyberattacks from the aggressor." 

However, the heart of Ukrainian cyber security was thousands of citizens of Aitiv, who joined the fight from the first minutes of the aggression.

"Cyber ​​volunteers have done a great deal so that Ukraine could not only defend itself, but also provide a decent rebuff to an aggressor in cyberspace," says Nataliya Tkachuk. 

"In the first few days, we selected about a thousand high-level cyber security experts.

Protected our critical infrastructure objects from hackers.

Strategically important sites were defended.

In fact, everything that is on the Internet, in which the state needed help," says Yehor Aushev.

Having repelled a massive cyberattack, the people of Haiti went on a counter-offensive.

"The main activity of cyber volunteers is cyber attacks on the banking and financial sphere of the Russian Federation, which is connected with the supply and purchase of weapons.

And also to the objects of the military-industrial complex", Nataliya Tkachuk tells about the front of cyber warfare. 

During the first months of the war, Ukrainian cyber warriors carried out more than a hundred large-scale counterattacks.

The data of 650,000 Proputnik volunteers who campaigned for the war were made public.

The truth about war crimes in Buch and losses of the Russian army was posted on state Russian websites.

And on the main holiday of totalitarianism, the ninth of May, the largest video hosting of the aggressor country - Rutube - was hacked.

And they removed all the materials from it.

"The work of this resource, which spreads lies all over the world, was suspended for several days," says Nataliya Tkachuk. 

So that everyone could join the digital resistance, the Ministry of Digitization announced recruitment for the IT army.

And in just a few days, more than two hundred thousand volunteers joined its ranks!

This is ten times more than the US cyber army.

"It was already possible to join the IT army simply by having a computer or a phone.

Specific goals were set.

And several hundred thousand people, not only from Ukraine, but also from all over the world, joined the confrontation," says Yehor Aushev. 

The tasks faced by the cyber army were completely different.

To perform some of them, you don't need any special education - just a gadget and the desire to repel the enemy. 

"You download the program and make a request," explains Ivan Petukhov.

- Many of those who are not from IT downloaded it and started creating obstacles for the enemy.

No matter how many server resources the enemy has, when there are half a million to a million requests, he will bend." 

"Everyone felt that he was part of the resistance, part of the struggle.

This is, in fact, a unique Ukrainian phenomenon that will be studied for many years to come, Yehor Aushev is proud of the cyber warriors.

- A photo of a Russian soldier's girlfriend was found in one of the buildings near Irpen.

And it was necessary to find information about who this person was.

Because he committed a war crime.

We helped investigate such cases." 

"The Security Service of Ukraine conducted an unprecedented operation to investigate the actions of the Armageddon criminal group," says Nataliya Tkachuk.

- It was established that its members are former SBU officers, traitors who remained in Crimea and work for the FSB.

Part of the infrastructure used by this hacker group is monitored and recorded every day by our main cyber security actors so that we can prove their guilt in an international court as an international war crime."