Ukrainian carriers are leasing their IPv4 addresses to stay afloat - sometimes after being overrun by Russia

Who can begrudge them? Maybe all of us if IP brokers send them to loose operators

Ukrainian telcos and ISPs have leased their IPv4 holdings to stay afloat during the nation’s war with Russia.

Network intelligence service provider Kentik advanced that theory last week in an analysis written by its director of internet analysis Doug Madory.

The researcher found “several cases in which large amounts of IPv4 space, formerly originated by prominent Ukrainian [autonomous systems] ASes, have moved out of the country (often with the help of IPv4 brokers) to dozens of new origins, including major cloud providers, hosting operations, and international telecoms.”

Madory thinks the result is “a dramatic reduction in Ukraine’s footprint in the global routing table — a new consequence of a protracted war in the digital age.”

The director reached that conclusion after using his firm’s intelligence services to list the top 100 Ukrainian providers that hold IPv4 addresses, then looking for the networks that currently deploy them. Doing so suggested an 18.5 percent decline in the amount of announced IPv4 space in Ukraine between February 2022 and May 2025.

Madory asked Ukraine’s dominant telco Ukrtelecom about its IPv4 holdings and was told it leased some to companies outside the country “to mitigate some of the extraordinary challenges we have been facing since the full-scale invasion began.”

Kentik’s analysis suggests at least seven other Ukrainian network operators have allowed other entities to use their IPv4 holdings. Some of the Ukrainian players operated in areas captured by Russia, such as the city of Mariupol, and went offline after Moscow’s troops arrived.

IP address leasing is a widespread practice, as demand for IPv4 remains strong. AWS started charging $43.80 per IPv4 address per year in 2023, and we recently learned of IPv4 being considered excellent collateral for loans.

Happily, it looks like some of the IPv4 leased by Ukrainian carriers have returned to the country: Kentik spotted IP addresses used by a Ukrainian carrier called Trinity being used outside the country for two years before another local player called “Sweet” started using them.

Madory thinks it’s fair enough if Ukrainian network operators lease their IP holdings to stay afloat during a war. But he also expressed concerns about IP brokers.

“Are IPv4 brokers taking advantage of the situation by leasing out so much of Ukraine’s IPv4 space?” he asked. “Or are the brokers vital ‘to secure financial stability’ for Ukrainian ISPs? Who is responsible when these ranges are used for various proxy services that cause problems on the internet?”

Madory also mentioned talks delivered by Geoff Huston, chief scientist of the Asia Pacific Network Information Center, who has suggested IPv4 is no longer relevant, and that stagnating prices for addresses prove his theory.

“But another reason could be that the market is being flooded with supply from Ukraine,” Madory suggested.

If correct, that would leave Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine inadvertently stabilizing the IPv4 market – a deeply strange outcome. ®