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Yandex is fighting to keep its services alive after Ukrainian drones hit two of its five data centres during the past two days.
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The company, often called “Russia’s Google,” operates the country’s most‑used search engine and a mobile app that delivers food orders and taxis to millions of users.
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President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strikes were retaliation for weeks of Russian drone attacks on Ukrainian data infrastructure.
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Both sides have heightened hits on essential services in recent months. Kyiv claims the Ukrainian attacks the aim at Moscow’s war budget, while Russia argue the sites serve civilian staff and military intelligence.
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The Sasovo centre in the Ryazan region was badly damaged overnight, leading Yandex to suspend its operations completely. A Kaluga hub, covering 130,000 square metres and powering 220,000 UK households’ electricity use, was also hit, putting parts of the site offline.
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Yandex officials said its data centres are “critical” for normal service delivery and that it cannot accurately predict when they will recover. Staff are working day and night, but the injuries are severe because the infrastructure was hit deep within the building.
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No Yandex employees were reported injured, though the Kaluga regional governor recorded nine people wounded in a broader strike on the city’s infrastructure.
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The full impact on Yandex’s services remains unclear. The company said some of its AI chatbot functions were temporarily unavailable while smart‑home devices could also experience glitches.
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The Sasovo data centre houses two of three super‑computers used to train Yandex’s AI model. Whether those systems survived the attack is still unknown.
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Ukraine’s defence ministry confirmed the attacks and said they could compel Russia to redirect resources to repair the damaged capacities, further stressing the war economy.
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Kyiv’s response is described as a “mirror‑like” fashion of Russian strikes on Ukrainian data infrastructure. Last month a Russian drone caught a business centre in Kyiv, killing four and disabling a data centre, which caused internet outages for about 100,000 households.
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Portions of the data already damaged are being transferred to foreign facilities by some Ukrainian companies, a move that could extend the conflict to cyber‑espionage territory.
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Russia has justified the attacks by claiming its targets are linked to Ukrainian military intelligence. However, Ukraine accuses Moscow of deliberately hitting civilian infrastructure, while Russia’s strategic bombardment of energy networks continues as winter approaches.
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