Ukrainian drones damage two major Yandex data centers

Strikes across Sasovo and Kaluga knock server clusters offline as retaliatory attacks target computing hubs housing Russian artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Ukrainian drone strikes hit two of five data centers operated by Russian technology company Yandex, setting off fires and knocking modules offline across consecutive days of attacks.¹² The strikes targeted facilities in the Ryazan and Kaluga regions on October 8 and October 9, disrupting consumer web platforms and cloud computing operations across Russia.¹²

Yandex operates Russia's dominant internet search engine and cloud network, while developing the YandexGPT artificial intelligence model.³ The company confirmed that both the Sasovo hub in the Ryazan region and a separate facility in Kaluga sustained direct damage.⁴² The strikes forced emergency shutdowns and triggered server failovers, leaving several municipal and corporate services temporarily unreachable.⁴

Targeting physical computing hubs

The first strike hit the Sasovo facility overnight on October 8.⁴ That location serves as one of five primary server campuses for Yandex and previously housed two of the company's three supercomputers built with Nvidia A100 processors for training machine learning systems.⁵¹ The impact ignited a fire and compelled engineers to isolate the site from the power grid, suspending operations across tens of thousands of servers.³

A second aerial attack followed during the night of October 9 against the company's installation in Kaluga Oblast.²⁴ Several infrastructure modules at the Kaluga site were disabled as falling debris and direct impacts damaged exterior power connections.²⁴ Kaluga regional Governor Vladislav Shapsha stated that air defense units intercepted 26 drones over the region during the broader barrage, which also injured nine people and damaged residential buildings in two surrounding districts.²

Yandex confirmed that no personnel were injured at either location.⁴¹ Emergency response teams entered the facilities to extinguish flames and inspect electrical distribution networks.⁴³ The company stated on October 9 that it was assessing the physical condition of the hardware, cautioning that technicians could not yet determine whether damaged computing clusters could be brought back into service.⁴³

Disruptions across Russian digital platforms

The loss of server capacity triggered immediate outages across Russian online platforms that rely on Yandex Cloud.² Real estate listing service Cian and digital publishing platform Litmarket experienced intermittent downtime, while online ticketing for regional bus networks in the Moscow area halted because of the sudden shutdown. Public websites for Russian Railways and Moscow soccer club Spartak Moscow also recorded service failures following the initial strike.¹

Third-party monitoring platform Detector404 logged 58,268 incident reports from users across Russia within 24 hours of the first strike. The disruptions spread into consumer applications, causing connectivity failures for digital banking platform T-Bank, video streaming service Ivi, and several commercial logistics tools.¹ Shares of Yandex dropped 3% on the Moscow Exchange as investors assessed the physical vulnerability of domestic digital infrastructure.⁵

Yandex redirected data flows to its remaining three regional hubs, advising commercial cloud clients to shift active workloads into alternative availability zones. The company stated that core consumer functions remained partially operational, though background data processing and high-demand applications experienced persistent slowdowns.²

Retaliatory strikes expand into cloud networks

The cross-border strikes against Russian data campuses followed weeks of intensive aerial assaults directed at telecommunications nodes and power facilities inside Ukraine.¹ Russian missile and drone salvos knocked out municipal grid connections in Kyiv in late September, cutting domestic internet access for roughly 100,000 Ukrainian households and forcing telecommunications engineers to relocate switching equipment into underground bunkers.²

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy linked the drone strikes directly to those electrical disruptions.² "We continue to respond to Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, and we’re doing so with high precision," Zelenskyy stated in a public message, describing the operation as a symmetrical response to strikes on Ukrainian communications infrastructure.¹ Ukrainian drone manufacturer Firepoint stated that its FP-1 one-way attack drones carried out the strike on the Kaluga campus.¹

The targeting of server hubs represents an evolution in long-range drone strategy. Ukrainian operations previously concentrated on oil refineries, munitions depots, Black Sea shipping, and commercial distribution warehouses operated by retail companies Wildberries and Ozon.¹ The expansion into digital hosting assets exposes the vulnerability of Russian computing clusters, which already face strict constraints on acquiring replacement enterprise processors under international technology sanctions.

What this rests on

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1. 1 JH Jeremy Hsu Document · arstechnica.com · 9 Oct 2026 Ukraine’s drones knock out AI data center belonging to "Russia’s Google" See the source
2. 2 YN Yahoo News Third-party reporting · yahoo.com · 9 Oct 2026 Second Russian Yandex data center damaged by drone attack in two days, company says See the source
3. 3 C CNBC Third-party reporting · cnbc.com · 8 Oct 2026 Russia's internet giant Yandex halts operations at major data center after drone attack See the source
4. 4 I ir.yandex Third-party reporting · ir.yandex What is happening to our data centers, the iron heart of Yandex | Investor Relations | Yandex See the source
5. 5 R Reuters Third-party reporting · reuters.com · 8 Oct 2026 Drones hit Yandex site in first major attack on Russian data hub See the source