Ukraine Warupdated 1h ago3 min read
Ukraine Strikes Yandex Data Center in Kaluga, Partially Disrupting Services
This article is an automated aggregation of coverage from news outlets. Our editorials offer in-depth analysis curated by the NewsCord team.
Ukrainian drone strike damaged Yandex data center in Kaluga, disabling modules and causing disruptions. Previous drone attack on Sasovo, Ryazan, caused a fire and shutdown of Yandex data center.
32 outlets told this the same way.
Outlets did split on Russian Attack Kills At Least 33 On Two Buses In Kramatorsk →
Yandex hit in Kaluga
Ukraine struck a major data center operated by Russia’s technology company Yandex in the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow, causing partial disruption in what the source described as the second such attack in as many days. Yandex said its data center in Kaluga was hit by a drone attack and that “a number of its units were completely disrupted,” while FirePoint said Kyiv used its attack drones of the FБ-1 model to strike what it described as Yandex’s largest data center. Yandex also said its Kaluga center was “partially disrupted,” and it warned that the incident could lead to some Yandex services being disrupted while it assessed the full extent of the damage.
The Kaluga attack followed an earlier Ukrainian drone attack that forced the closure of Yandex’s data center in Sasovo in the Ryazan region, where two of the three supercomputers used to develop the company’s AI model are located. Yandex said it was struggling to maintain services after two of its five data centres were struck by Ukrainian drones in the past two days, and Yandex said its operations were “completely suspended” after the Sasovo strike.
Injuries and competing claims
Kaluga region governor Vladislav Shapsha said nine people were injured in a drone attack that targeted the city’s infrastructure, with five hospitalized and in stable condition. Yandex said it had “no injuries at the facility,” while Shapsha said nine people were injured and infrastructure was damaged by Ukrainian drones. AFP quoted Yandex saying that “several units in the center went completely out of service,” and it also quoted the company warning that this “may lead to some Yandex services being disrupted.”
The BBC said Ukraine’s defence ministry confirmed the data centre attacks could “force Russia to divert resources to repair the damaged capacity,” while it also described Zelensky framing the strikes as a “mirror-like fashion” response. Zelensky told reporters, “We always respond in kind,” and the source said he confirmed that drones belonging to his country struck the Kaluga center, describing the attack as a “retaliation.”
What comes next
Yandex said its data centres were “critical” for the normal operation of its services and that it was “very difficult to predict” when they would be back online, as teams worked “day and night” to keep services running. The exact scope of the disruption to Yandex’s services was unclear, while Yandex told Tass that some of its AI chatbot functions were temporarily unavailable and that smart home devices may also experience problems. El País said the Kaluga data center is the company’s largest, covering an area of 130,000 square meters, and Zelenski promised to respond after Ukraine’s first directed attack on the Russian IT sector.
El País also said the destruction of servers caused interruptions in services of several banks, transportation companies including the Russian railroad, and payments in several supermarket networks, while Yandex said it was “very difficult to estimate a timeline for the restoration of the equipment.” The Reuters-linked reporting in the Vietnam.vn roundup said Russia’s Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed on October 8 that Moscow supports a comprehensive resolution to the conflict, while it also said the Yandex data center stopped functioning after a Ukrainian drone attack on October 8.