Ukraine disables two Yandex data centres with drone strikes

Ukrainian drones struck Yandex data centres in the Kaluga and Ryazan regions of Russia on 8 and 9 October 2026, the Russian technology company said, halting operations at the Sasovo site and partly disabling the Kaluga facility. Nine people were injured in the Kaluga strike, five of whom were treated in hospital, regional governor Vladislav Shapsha said.newsday.com+1

The strikes mark a widening of Ukraine's campaign against Russian technology infrastructure, after Moscow targeted data hubs inside Ukraine over the previous month. Yandex, which is heavily involved in Russia's artificial intelligence development and is sometimes called Russia's Google, said the attacks struck at the core of its operations. The company operates five data centres, two of which have now been hit.

Two data centres struck in two days

The Sasovo strike in the Ryazan region, about 300 kilometers southeast of Moscow, caused a fire that completely halted data centre operations, Yandex said. The site houses two of the three supercomputers Yandex uses to develop its AI models, according to the company's own 2021 statement. Yandex has declined to say whether the supercomputers were affected by the attack.

Ukrainian arms maker Firepoint said Kyiv used its FP-1 one-way attack drones to strike what it called Yandex's biggest data centre in the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow, on 9 October. Firepoint said several modules were completely knocked out of action. Yandex confirmed the Kaluga site was struck by Ukrainian drones and partly put out of action.

The supercomputers at Sasovo are built around Nvidia A100 chips, which Yandex uses to train its YandexGPT large language model, the company said in 2021. Yandex said it is assessing the damage from the Sasovo strike and cannot confirm whether the equipment can be restored. The company's status page says its ru-central1-b availability zone is down.

Supercomputers and AI models at risk

Yandex shares fell 4.5% on the Moscow exchange after the attacks. Maryana Lazaricheva, head of equity research at T-Investments, said the risks involve not only temporary unavailability of Yandex services and lost revenue but also the company's extensive base of business-to-business clients. She said Yandex could redistribute some load to other data centres, but that if the chain of attacks continues, this possibility vanishes.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday, following the Ryazan strike, that Ukraine responds in mirror-like fashion to Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centres. He confirmed on Friday that his drones had struck the Kaluga data centre in what he called a tit-for-tat response. Russia has struck several Ukrainian data centres and telecommunications facilities over the past month, including targets in central Kyiv.

Mirror-like responses on both sides

Russian strikes on Ukrainian data centres have forced some to suspend operations, and roughly 100,000 households suffered temporary internet outages after one attack. Ukraine's digital minister said last month that the country is moving digital infrastructure underground in response to Russian attacks. Multiple Russian online services reported technical issues on 8 October, including Russian Railways and Spartak Moscow's website.

Yandex recommended users employ alternative service restoration plans, including its own bare metal servers, but advised that it will not be possible to restore service in the near future. The company said it struck a deal with other cloud providers to enable Yandex Cloud clients to swiftly move their data and services. Two of Yandex's other three data centres are in the Moscow region, and one is in the Vladimir region.

If Yandex must write off the Sasovo data centre, it will be the second cloud provider to lose facilities to drone attacks this year, after AWS decided its Bahrain facility could not be recovered following an Iranian drone attack. Yandex said its teams are working day and night to keep services running, calling it the company's most important task.