Ukrainian Drones Disable Three Yandex Data Centers Totaling 115 MW Including AI Supercomputers

Overnight strikes hit Sasovo (Ryazan) on 7-8 October, Kaluga on 9 October, and Vladimir on 10-11 October. The Sasovo site housed two of Yandex's three AI training supercomputers; Vladimir contained the Galushkin system. Yandex reported complete shutdown at two sites, partial damage at the third, and emergency-mode operations across affected cloud regions.

Yandex financial disclosures list 64,000 Cloud customers; Russian internet watchdog reports outages in email, Yandex Pay, taxi, food delivery, Alice voice assistant, and over a dozen third-party services. The company has since contracted Selectel, K2Cloud, and VK Cloud for customer migration and updated terms to exclude liability for drone-induced failures.

These strikes mark direct targeting of dual-use AI compute and national cloud backbone, diverging from prior focus on energy and military sites. Contract records show Yandex data centers were built under state digital-economy programs, making them de-facto critical infrastructure. No independent forensic attribution has been released; Ukrainian statements remain silent on the operation.

Digital Development Minister Shadayev confirmed Defense Ministry coordination on physical hardening. Remaining three Yandex facilities now face elevated risk; customers are advised to maintain multi-cloud redundancy beyond Yandex infrastructure.