Ukraine strikes Yandex data centre in third attack on Russian tech giant this week

Ukraine struck a Yandex data centre near Moscow on Sunday, marking the third time in a single week that the country has targeted the Russian tech company's infrastructure. The facility in Vladimir, east of the capital, sustained damage in a drone attack that forced Yandex to completely suspend operations at the site. No injuries were reported, though the company confirmed that some of its services became unavailable to users as a result.

Yandex, often described as Russia's equivalent to Google, operates five data centres across the country. Two of them had already been hit earlier in the week—one in Sasovo on Thursday and another in Kaluga on Friday, southwest of Moscow. Each strike disrupted services for millions of people who rely on the company's platforms. Beyond its search engine, Yandex runs a food-ordering app, a taxi service, an AI chatbot, and smart home devices that are deeply embedded in Russian daily life. After the first two attacks, the company said it was difficult to predict when full service restoration would occur, and that its data centres were essential to keeping these operations running.

The pattern of strikes reflects a deliberate strategy by Kyiv. Ukrainian officials framed the attacks as targeting infrastructure that generates revenue for Moscow's war effort, arguing that forcing Russia to divert resources toward repairs would weaken its military capacity. This rationale sits at the centre of a broader escalation in infrastructure attacks by both sides as the conflict enters its fifth year following Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. Both nations have intensified strikes on power plants, communications networks, and digital infrastructure in recent months.

The timing of Sunday's attack carried diplomatic weight. It came just hours after US President Donald Trump issued a public warning to Ukraine, telling the country to "damn well stop" targeting Russian oil refineries. Trump's position reflected a broader concern about global diesel supplies and energy markets—he suggested that allowing Russia to export more fuel could benefit the world economy. The statement triggered sharp criticism from European allies and sparked a direct confrontation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who rejected the premise that Ukraine should constrain its military strategy to serve international energy markets.

While Ukraine pressed its campaign against Russian infrastructure, Russian forces continued their own strikes across the border. Overnight attacks on four districts in Ukraine's southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region left six people injured, according to the State Emergency Service. The toll was far heavier in Zaporizhzhia, where Russian strikes on Saturday killed at least twenty people, including four children, local officials confirmed. Russia has previously targeted Ukrainian data centres as well, causing widespread internet outages and prompting some Ukrainian companies to relocate their servers abroad to maintain continuity.

Yandex said it was working to restore connectivity at the Vladimir facility, though the company provided no timeline. The repeated strikes on the same target within days underscored how central digital infrastructure has become to the war's economic and strategic dimensions. For Ukraine, each successful attack represented a way to impose costs on Russia's ability to wage war. For Russia, the damage to civilian-facing services like food delivery and taxi apps added friction to everyday life for ordinary Russians, even as the military conflict continued to grind forward.