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Yandex confirmed that its data centre in the city of Vladimir was completely shut down following a Ukrainian drone strike overnight with no injuries reported among staff according to the company’s statement. The facility which has a capacity of 50 megawatts and can accommodate nearly 3 000 server racks powered more than 80 key services in the company’s cloud platform including computing resources databases artificial intelligence tools and developer platforms. Disruptions spread to users across Russia as well as in Kazakhstan Belarus and Armenia affecting taxi orders banking applications and other digital services Russian independent outlet Astra reported.
The latest strike follows similar Ukrainian attacks on Yandex facilities in Sasovo on October 8 and in Kaluga on October 9 Reuters reported. The Sasovo site housed two of the company’s three supercomputers used to train its YandexGPT artificial intelligence model while the Kaluga centre described as the largest was partly disabled with several modules knocked out of action according to Yandex. Shares in the company fell about 4 percent on the Moscow Exchange after the second strike Meduza figures show and further declines were recorded following the third incident.
Yandex which operates Russia’s most popular search engine and provides services from navigation to online shopping and streaming has struggled to maintain operations with the company stating that restoring equipment at the affected data centres presented a difficult challenge. Ukrainian arms manufacturer Firepoint said its FP-1 one-way attack drones carried out the strike on the Kaluga facility while President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the actions as a symmetrical and high-precision response to Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure. Zelenskyy posted on X that Kyiv would continue to answer Moscow’s assaults on data centres and telecommunications networks.
Russia has targeted Ukrainian data centres and digital infrastructure since late September disrupting mobile phone and internet services for thousands of people according to an Ars Technica assessment. At least eight Ukrainian companies saw their facilities damaged or destroyed in that period with some sites hit multiple times a pattern that prompted Zelenskyy’s vow of mirror-like retaliation the Financial Times reported. The escalation forms part of a widening air campaign that has also seen Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries and warehouses.
The latest Ukrainian action occurred despite a warning from US President Donald Trump who stated on October 10 that it was time for Ukraine to install new leadership suggesting Zelenskyy had not done enough to end the conflict The Independent reported. Trump additionally linked the situation to rising diesel prices in the United States though he offered no specific details on how the strikes factored into that assessment. Ukrainian officials have not publicly addressed the Trump comments in connection with the data centre attacks.
The Vladimir data centre was located in a region where residents reported explosions overnight though Russian authorities have issued no official confirmation of the strike or its consequences RBC-Ukraine noted. Yandex has warned that the full extent of damage across the three incidents remains under assessment with timelines for full restoration unclear. The company which is heavily involved in Russia’s artificial intelligence development said its core services continued running where possible but users continued to report widespread outages into October 11.
