Key takeaways:
- Yandex said attacks on its Sasovo and Kaluga data centres suspended operations at one site and took part of the other out of service.
- Yandex reported temporary problems with some AI chatbot functions and warned that smart-home devices could be affected.
- Zelensky said Ukraine was responding to Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centres; his Thursday remarks followed the strike in Ryazan.
Ukrainian drones struck two of Russian technology company Yandex’s five data centres in two days, shutting down one site and partly disabling another. Yandex said it was struggling to keep services running and could not predict when the centres would be back online.
The first attack hit Yandex’s facility in Sasovo, in the Ryazan region, overnight into Thursday. Yandex said the centre was “seriously damaged” and its operations were “completely suspended.” Drones then struck a centre in the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow, on Friday morning, taking part of its infrastructure out of service.
Yandex runs Russia’s most popular search engine, along with food-ordering and taxi apps used by tens of millions of people. It said the data centres were “critical” to the normal operation of its services. “Our teams are working day and night to keep services running and help those affected by the incident,” the company said. “Right now this is our most important task, but unfortunately it is not an easy one.”
The full extent of the disruption remains unclear. Yandex told the Russian state news agency Tass that some functions of its AI chatbot were temporarily unavailable and that its smart-home devices might also experience problems. The company said none of its employees was injured. The regional governor in Kaluga said nine people were injured in a drone attack on infrastructure in the region.
The Sasovo centre houses two of the three supercomputers used to develop Yandex’s AI model, according to the BBC. It is unclear whether they survived. The BBC also reported that Yandex had previously described its Kaluga centre as one of Russia’s largest, covering 130,000 square metres (1,399,000 square feet) and using as much electricity each year as 220,000 UK households.
Ukraine’s defence ministry confirmed the data centre attacks, saying they could “force Russia to divert resources to repair the damaged capacity.” Zelensky said Kyiv was responding to Russian strikes on Ukrainian data centres. Speaking on Thursday after the Ryazan strike, he said: “We always respond in mirror-like fashion. You all know, they have been hitting and continue to hit our data centres. We are responding. I can’t share all the details.”
Russian attacks on Ukrainian data and telecommunications facilities have disrupted services. The BBC reported that a Russian drone hit a business centre in Kyiv last month, killing four people and damaging a data centre; about 100,000 households in Kyiv and the surrounding region suffered internet outages. Some Ukrainian firms have begun moving data from damaged servers abroad. Moscow says the data centres it has targeted were used by Ukrainian military intelligence, while Ukraine accuses Russia of targeting civilian infrastructure.
The strikes on Yandex came as Ukraine attacked other Russian facilities. Al Jazeera reported that Ukraine’s military said it hit three missile-related sites overnight, including facilities in the Tver and Nizhny Novgorod regions. The Nizhny Novgorod governor said a serviceman was killed repelling the attack and drone debris caused minimal infrastructure damage. The Tver governor said a fire at a plant in Redkino was quickly extinguished. Zelensky also said drones struck a Lukoil oil refinery in Ukhta, 1,900 kilometres (1,180 miles) from the Ukrainian border.
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