Ukrainian drone attacks disrupt major Russian data centres

Ukrainian drones hit five data centres belonging to the country's largest technology firms in October, leading to persistent failures in payment processing, navigation apps and cloud services across Russia. The attacks targeted three Yandex facilities – in Sasovo (Ryazan region) on 7 October, in Kaluga on 9 October and in Vladimir on 11 October – a Sber data centre in Balakovo (Saratov region) on 14 October, and a VKontakte server farm near St Petersburg on 18 October.

The companies have not disclosed the extent of the damage, but users reported difficulties paying for goods, ordering taxis, using navigation services and accessing cloud storage. Analysts say restoring the infrastructure could take months or years, and the strikes have set back Russia's artificial-intelligence projects, according to Mikhail Klimarev, head of the Internet Protection Society.

"After such a strike it is hard to expect anything to have survived: data-centre equipment is fragile, demanding and expensive. Soot from fires is extremely harmful to electronics," Klimarev told the Associated Press.

The damaged Yandex facilities housed three supercomputers that rank among the world's top 500, including a system that previously placed 19th globally. "Ukrainian drone strikes will probably delay the development of Russian artificial intelligence even further," said Connor Martin of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Restoration is complicated by Western sanctions and a global chip shortage, as Yandex's supercomputers rely on Nvidia A100 processors that Russia cannot legally import. Klimarev added that the attacks might push Russian firms to seek computing capacity abroad, potentially easing the country's push for a fully sovereign internet.

Russia has also been targeting Ukrainian data centres this autumn, destroying a large Datagroup facility in Kyiv on 19 October and damaging other sites in September and October. Analysts note that Russia's requirement for domestic data storage makes its facilities more vulnerable to such strikes.