Yandex says drone attacks damaged two Russian data centres in two days
The company says its Sasovo centre has stopped operating and part of its Kaluga infrastructure is out of service. It has given no timetable for restoring equipment.
Yandex said on Friday, October 9, that a drone attack had disabled part of its data centre in Kaluga, Russia, one day after a separate attack stopped operations at its Sasovo facility. The damage puts infrastructure behind the company's consumer and business services under pressure, although Yandex has not established how widely users or customers will be affected.
In a statement dated October 9, Yandex said the Sasovo centre was seriously damaged during the night of October 7–8 and had stopped operating entirely. It said the Kaluga site was attacked on Friday morning and part of its infrastructure was put out of service. No employees were injured at either site, according to the company.
What Yandex says about the Kaluga and Sasovo damage
Yandex said emergency services and its own specialists were working at both locations while it assessed the condition of the infrastructure. Its teams were trying to maintain services and help people affected by the incidents, it said, describing that work as difficult. The company said it could not yet give a reliable timetable for restoring equipment at the data centres.
The Associated Press reported that Yandex described several modules at Kaluga as completely out of service and warned that some services could be disrupted. That warning does not identify which services or customers will be affected, or for how long. Yandex's assessment of the full damage was still under way, AP reported.
Yandex's account of employee safety is specific to its facilities. AP separately reported that Kaluga governor Vladislav Shapsha said nine people were wounded in drone attacks across the region. He did not identify those people as Yandex employees or say they were injured at the data-centre site; their connection to the facility, if any, remains unknown.
How the Sasovo shutdown affected services
Reuters reported that the earlier strike caused a fire and forced Yandex to suspend operations at Sasovo, a centre it described as housing tens of thousands of servers. Reuters said Yandex reported that its core consumer services were unaffected by that attack. Yandex Cloud, however, reported electricity problems in one data-centre zone and advised customers to use other zones.
Reuters also reported technical problems at several Russian online services during the Sasovo outage, including the Russian Railways website. A bus company in the Moscow region said online ticket sales were unavailable because of a temporary data-centre shutdown. The problems coincided with the Yandex incident; the available reporting does not establish that the attack caused every reported service problem.
The potential reach of a prolonged outage extends beyond one website. Yandex lists route planning, music, film and grocery ordering among the services people use daily, as well as tools businesses use to take orders, serve customers and work with partners. The company says interruptions can disrupt those routines and operations. That describes the services at risk, not a confirmed list of services disrupted by Friday's attack.
Why the Sasovo site matters to Yandex's AI work
Reuters reported that Yandex had said in 2021 that Sasovo housed two of its three Nvidia A100-based supercomputers, used to train its YandexGPT model. Their presence gives the site's shutdown significance beyond routine consumer services. Reuters said Yandex declined to say whether the supercomputers were affected by the October 8 attack. Their condition cannot be inferred from the centre's closure.
The attacks come amid damage to digital infrastructure on both sides of the war. Reuters reported that Russia had struck Ukrainian data centres and telecommunications facilities in the preceding month, including sites in central Kyiv. Ukraine's digital minister had said the country was moving digital infrastructure underground in response, Reuters reported. Those earlier strikes provide context for the new incidents, without establishing who selected either Yandex site or why.
What remains unknown about recovery
The confirmed company account is that Sasovo stopped operating and some Kaluga infrastructure failed after attacks on consecutive days. Yandex is still assessing the physical damage and has not given a restoration date. Its statements and the available reporting do not establish the full effect on customers, the status of the Sasovo supercomputers or the operational details of the attacks. Further updates from Yandex will be needed to determine how much service capacity can be restored and when.
Sources and context
- ‘Iron heart’ of Yandex — what is happening with our data centresYandex
- Russian strikes across Ukraine kill 3 people and wound 8Associated Press
- Drones hit Yandex site in first major attack on Russian data hubReuters (republished by Investing.com)
- Ukraine takes aim at Russia’s AI data infrastructureAl Jazeera (report credited to AFP and Reuters)
AI-assisted article checked against the listed sources. NewsJaws did not conduct interviews or attend the reported events.
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