In brief
Ukraine launched a drone strike that damaged a Yandex data centre near Moscow, shutting down services for several hours. This is the third such attack in a week, following earlier hits on other Yandex sites. The strike aligns with Kyiv’s strategy to hit Russia’s revenue sources and disrupt its war machine. Yandex is working to restore connectivity while Russian forces continue operations across Ukraine. The incident highlights the ongoing escalation of cyber‑physical warfare in the conflict.
Ukraine has struck Yandex’s data centre near Moscow for the third time this week, forcing the Russian tech company to suspend services at the site.
The drone attack, which hit a facility in Vladimir east of the capital, caused no injuries but left the data centre damaged and offline. Yandex, often dubbed Russia's Google, said that some of its services, including its AI chatbot and smart‑home applications, were temporarily unavailable as workers worked to restore connectivity.
This latest strike follows two earlier hits that Thursday in Sasovo and Friday in Kaluga, which disrupted other Yandex operations. The company said the centres are critical for day‑to‑day services used by millions of users across the country and that the downtime could not be accurately predicted.
Ukraine’s strategy, officials say, targets revenue streams that support Moscow's war machine, aiming to force Russia to divert resources toward repairing digital infrastructure. The attack was carried out hours after former U.S. President Donald Trump publicly criticised Kyiv for bombing Russian oil refineries.
Meanwhile, Russian forces have continued operations across the eastern front, with Ukrainian casualties reported in the Dnipropetrovsk region and recent attacks on Zaporizhzhia. The escalation of strikes on data centres and civilian infrastructure underscores the continuing intensity of the conflict in the fifth year of the invasion.
