Yandex struggles after Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian data centres

Yandex, the search engine that dominates Russian internet traffic and operates the apps millions rely on for food delivery and taxi rides, announced Friday that it was struggling to keep the lights on. Two of its five data centres had been struck by Ukrainian drones within the past two days—one in Sasovo, deep in the Ryazan region, the other in Kaluga, southwest of Moscow. The company said operations at Sasovo had been "completely suspended" after what it called serious damage overnight into Thursday. The Kaluga facility, one of Russia's largest at 130,000 square meters and consuming as much electricity annually as 220,000 UK households, had also been hit that morning, with parts of its infrastructure taken offline. Yandex told the state news agency Tass that some of its AI chatbot functions were temporarily unavailable and that its smart home devices might experience problems. The company's teams were working around the clock, it said, but acknowledged it was "very difficult to predict" when full service would return.

The attacks were not random. President Volodymyr Zelensky framed them as direct retaliation for weeks of Russian drone strikes on Ukrainian data centres. Ukraine's defence ministry confirmed the operation, saying the goal was to force Moscow to divert resources away from the war effort by requiring repairs to damaged infrastructure. Kyiv has characterized its strikes as aimed at revenue streams that feed Russia's military machine. The pattern reflects how thoroughly the conflict has moved beyond traditional battlefields—both sides are now systematically targeting the digital backbone of their opponent's economy and communications.

The Sasovo data centre holds particular strategic weight. It houses two of three supercomputers that Yandex uses to develop its artificial intelligence model. Whether those machines survived the strike remains unclear. The company said none of its own employees were injured in either attack, though the regional governor in Kaluga reported nine people wounded in the drone strike on the city's broader infrastructure.

This escalation sits within a larger pattern. Last month, a Russian drone hit a business centre in Kyiv, killing four people and damaging a data centre there. That strike left roughly 100,000 households in Kyiv and surrounding areas without internet. Some Ukrainian companies have already begun moving their data to servers outside the country, a practical acknowledgment that no facility on either side can be considered safe. Moscow has justified its own data centre strikes by claiming they were used by Ukrainian military intelligence. Ukraine counters that Russia is deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure—a charge Russia has leveled at Kyiv in turn.

As winter approaches, the tempo of these attacks is likely to intensify. Russia has a documented pattern of striking Ukrainian energy infrastructure as temperatures drop, aiming to degrade living conditions and strain resources. Ukraine appears to be matching that intensity by targeting Russian digital infrastructure, betting that the economic and logistical costs will matter. What remains uncertain is how long Yandex can sustain its services with two of five data centres compromised, and whether the company—and by extension, the tens of millions of Russians who depend on it—can absorb the disruption without broader consequences for the country's digital economy.