Drones have struck a data centre operated by Yandex, one of Russia’s leading technology and artificial intelligence companies, in what the company described as the first major attack on a Russian data hub since the start of the war in Ukraine.
Yandex said the attack on its data centre in Sasovo caused a fire and forced the facility to suspend operations.
The centre is one of Yandex’s five major data hubs and hosts tens of thousands of servers. The company said it was working to restore affected services.
Yandex said its main consumer services were not affected but did not disclose the extent of the damage.
On its Yandex Cloud website, the company said an electricity supply problem had affected one zone of the data centre and advised customers to use other zones.
The incident is the latest sign that drone attacks by Russia and Ukraine are increasingly affecting critical economic infrastructure.
The attacks have expanded from energy facilities and oil refineries to ports, vessels transporting oil and grain, e-commerce warehouses and, more recently, data centres.
Russia has also conducted attacks on Ukrainian data centres and telecommunications infrastructure over the past month, including facilities in central Kyiv.
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Ukrainian strikes inside Russia have contributed to fuel shortages and queues at petrol stations, while disruptions have affected thousands of small businesses involved in e-commerce and added to inflationary pressures through higher fuel costs.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in August authorised the state to take control of critically important infrastructure deemed inadequately protected against drone attacks.
Russia’s RBC news outlet reported on Thursday, citing sources, that businesses were discussing the development of data centres in countries considered friendly by Moscow.
Some Ukrainian data centres have also been forced to suspend operations after being damaged in attacks, while one strike temporarily disrupted internet services for about 100,000 households.
Ukraine’s Digital Minister told Reuters last month that the country was moving parts of its digital infrastructure underground in response to Russian attacks.
Yandex, which launched Russia’s first search engine in 1997, is among the country’s major technology companies and is not under Western sanctions.
The company operates YandexGPT, one of Russia’s leading artificial intelligence models, as well as cloud computing services and consumer platforms including Yandex Taxi and Yandex Music.
