Russian tech giant Yandex's data center in Sasovo burned out from the inside, a Ukrainian OSINT analyst wrote on 22 October. On cloud-free satellite images, he saw almost no significant holes in its roof. Ukrainian drones hit the site overnight on 8 October.
Sasovo was the first strike on a data center in Russia. It came two weeks after Russia destroyed data centers in Kyiv. Drones then hit Yandex sites in Vladimir and Kaluga, a Sber data center, and a VK data center near St. Petersburg, which VK acknowledged. In occupied Donbas, monitoring channels reported hits on buildings housing telecom operators.
The analyst, who goes by Harbuz, runs the Ukrainian OSINT channel Dnipro Osint. His roof reading comes from the images. His interior claim comes from what he called available information: he wrote that a fire broke out inside and put part of the equipment out of action.
In an earlier post, Harbuz wrote that a third of the data center had burned out. In the new one, he writes that the building burned out from the inside. He does not say whether he revised the earlier figure.
Russian outlet Agentstvo studied Airbus images from 12 October. It found damage on about a third of the building. Unlike Harbuz, though, Agentstvo described a blackened western roof with damage resembling holes.
On 8 October, Yandex stated that the attack caused a fire and forced it to suspend operations at the site, which hosts tens of thousands of servers, Reuters reported. Yandex Cloud and the Disk and Documents services that run on it ran with major disruptions that morning, Russian outlet The Bell reported.
Later that day, the company stated: "The scale of the damage to the infrastructure is still being assessed. For the moment, we cannot confirm whether it is possible to restore the data centre equipment in Sasovo." Two of Yandex's three supercomputers, used to develop its AI model, are housed there.
The same day, journalists asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy whether Ukraine was targeting Russian data centers. He did not refer specifically to the Yandex strike, Reuters noted, but said: "We always respond in mirror-like fashion."
In recent days, a Ukrainian drone strike hit Russia’s largest data center, owned by bank and technology company Sberbank. The strike came after Ukraine hit three data centers belonging to the tech giant Yandex, which is often referred to as “Russia’s Google.” After those attacks, Yandex’s traffic dropped 94%. Its users experienced heavy disruption to […]
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A Ukrainian drone attack has reportedly forced the closure of a Yandex data centre in Russia’s Ryazan region, causing a fire and disrupting part of the company’s infrastructure. Shares in the Russian technology group fell by more than three per cent in early Moscow trading on Thursday, 8 October.
The installation in Sasovo was affected during overnight strikes on Russian territory. Yandex said it was working to restore affected infrastructure, while its principal consumer services remained operational. The incident has raised questions about the vulnerability of Russia’s digital economy to Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign.
The affected data centre began operating in 2014 in buildings formerly occupied by the Sasta machine-tool manufacturing plant. Yandex subsequently connected the installation to Moscow by fibre-optic communications links as part of its wider computing infrastructure.
Ryazan regional governor Pavel Malkov said Russian air defences intercepted two drones over the region. He reported a fire on the roof of an industrial building in the Sasovo district and damage to windows in nearby private homes. No casualties were reported.
According to a statement on the incident, the situation had been brought under control while work to restore infrastructure continued. Yandex said its main consumer services remained operational.
The company’s cloud division also reported an electricity supply problem affecting an availability zone known as ru-central1-b. Clients were advised to use alternative zones where necessary to maintain service continuity.
Yandex shares dropped by approximately 3.4 per cent to 3,568.5 roubles in early trading on the Moscow Exchange. The decline followed news of the fire, although a single trading session cannot establish the long-term financial cost of the disruption.
Yandex operates search, advertising, navigation, artificial intelligence and cloud computing services. Its infrastructure therefore supports commercial users as well as the company’s own applications. The duration of the interruption, the extent of physical damage and the cost of repairs will determine the wider impact.
Investors can follow the company’s quoted share price as further details emerge.
In a separate development, explosions and a fire were reported on Thursday near the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat refining and petrochemical complex in Russia’s Republic of Bashkortostan, around 1,400 kilometres from the Ukrainian border. The precise location of the fire and the extent of damage had not been independently established.
The Gazprom-owned complex processes hydrocarbon feedstock and produces petrol, diesel, fuel oil and petrochemicals. It has previously been targeted by Ukrainian drones. The latest reported incident comes amid repeated attacks on Russian refining and fuel infrastructure.
Ukraine’s long-range economic campaign has focused heavily on oil refineries, fuel stores, military production plants and transport infrastructure. A strike affecting a major data centre introduces another category of vulnerability: the computing equipment and supporting utilities used by the digital economy.
Such sites serve businesses, financial institutions and industrial enterprises, and can also support defence-related activities. However, no publicly verified evidence establishes that the Sasovo data centre was directly involved in Russian military operations.
Damage to power supplies, cooling systems and network connections can interrupt services without necessarily destroying servers. Operators with geographically distributed facilities may be able to shift workloads to unaffected locations. The suspension of one centre therefore does not mean that Russia’s internet infrastructure has ceased functioning.
The attacks coincide with Russia’s plans for substantial military expenditure in 2027. The draft federal budget envisages considerable government spending and borrowing as Moscow continues its war against Ukraine.
Ukraine’s strikes on economic infrastructure are intended to increase the cost of maintaining Russia’s invasion. Disruption to energy facilities can affect fuel production and revenue, while attacks on technology and industrial sites may interrupt wider commercial and logistical operations.
The cumulative effect depends on the severity and duration of the damage. Neither the reported temporary closure of the Yandex facility nor preliminary accounts of the Salavat fire establish the scale of lasting losses.
The incidents nonetheless illustrate the exposure of Russian industrial and technology assets far beyond the Ukrainian border, as Kyiv increasingly targets infrastructure that supports the country’s economy.
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