The customers of Vodafone Ukraine who live in the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk experienced telecommunication disruptions. The network failure influenced nearly two million customers. Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) officials claim that cable cuts were enforced by the Ukrainian government, and threatened to take over Vodafone's infrastructure. The company said that the malfunctioning parts of its backbone infrastructure lay in the neutral buffer zones that are not under control of the official Ukrainian government. Vodafone Ukraine, fully owned by Russia's MobileTele Systems (MTS), sent a request to the relevant authorities, including the Ukrainian administration of Luhansk and Donetsk regions, the Joint Centre for Coordination & Control (JCCC), and the OSCE SMM (Organisation for Security & Cooperation in Europe Special Monitoring Mission) for permission to access its infrastructure in order to repair the fibre backbone.