Ukrainian Drones Hit Three Yandex Data Centers in Russia

Three Ukrainian drone strikes against Yandex data centers in Russia between October 8 and October 11, 2026, disrupted digital services, artificial intelligence tools, and cloud infrastructure. The attacks targeted facilities in the Ryazan, Kaluga, and Vladimir regions as Ukraine responded to Russian strikes on Ukrainian digital infrastructure, according to reports from the BBC, Ars Technica, and the Kyiv Post. The latest strike hit a data center in Vladimir early Sunday, October 11, forcing the facility to suspend operations.

The Kyiv Post reported that more than 80 digital platforms and services were affected, including Yandex applications, enterprise cloud systems, and third-party commercial services. The Vladimir facility reportedly had a capacity of 40 to 50 megawatts and was designed to accommodate up to 2,880 server racks. Yandex's cloud services experienced disruptions affecting computing, storage, database management, and software development tools, according to the Kyiv Post.

Earlier attacks damaged two other facilities. Yandex said its Sasovo data center in the Ryazan region sustained serious damage during an overnight attack into Thursday, October 8, resulting in a complete operational shutdown. A separate strike on its Kaluga facility on Friday, October 9, disabled multiple hardware modules.

Yandex acknowledged that the attacks affected its ability to maintain normal operations. The company said its data centers were "critical" for the normal operation of its services and that it was "very difficult to predict" when they would be back online. The company said its teams were working continuously to maintain services, but restoring operations remained difficult. Yandex also confirmed that no employees had been injured in the attacks, according to the BBC.

The disruptions affected services beyond Yandex's own platforms. The BBC reported that some artificial intelligence chatbot functions were temporarily unavailable and that smart home devices could experience problems. The Kyiv Post also listed Yandex Music, the Alice voice assistant, Telemost videoconferencing, and Yandex Cloud products among the affected services.

Users also reported problems with banking applications, ride-hailing platforms, and retail chains, including Magnit and Fix Price, according to the Kyiv Post. Earlier outages following the attacks affected Russian Railways, media websites, and other online platforms, according to Reuters reporting cited by Ars Technica.

The Sasovo facility is particularly important to Yandex's artificial intelligence operations because it houses two of the company's three supercomputers used to develop its YandexGPT model. The status of those machines following the strike was unclear. Yandex's Kaluga data center is another major facility.

The BBC reported that it covers 130,000 square meters and consumes as much electricity annually as 220,000 UK households. Ukraine has framed the attacks as a response to Russia's campaign against its own infrastructure. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv was retaliating against Russian strikes, while Ukraine's defense ministry said attacks on Russian data centers could force Moscow to redirect resources toward repairs.

Russia has maintained that Ukrainian data centers are used by military intelligence. Ukraine, however, accuses Moscow of deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure as Russian forces intensify attacks on energy facilities ahead of winter.

A Russian drone struck a business center in Kyiv in September, killing four people and damaging a data center, according to the BBC. The attacks left approximately 100,000 households in Kyiv and the surrounding region without internet access, prompting some Ukrainian companies to move data from damaged servers to facilities abroad. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that its air defenses intercepted 479 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones overnight across 16 Russian regions, occupied Crimea, and the Black Sea, according to the Kyiv Post. Vladimir Region Governor Aleksandr Avdeev said drone strikes damaged electrical substations and disrupted municipal power supplies, while utility crews restored heat, water, and about 80 percent of electricity service in affected areas by Sunday morning.