Ukraine hits two Yandex data centres in back-to-back drone strikes
Strikes on the Sasovo and Kaluga sites knocked out AI supercomputers, disrupted Yandex Cloud clients and pushed the company's shares lower
Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign has found a new kind of target: Russia’s server racks.
Over two consecutive days in early October 2026, drones struck two data centres operated by Yandex, the tech giant often described as “Russia’s Google.” One facility shut down entirely. The other lost several modules.
Two strikes, two days
The first attack came on October 8 at Yandex’s Sasovo facility in the Ryazan region. The strike set off a significant fire and forced a complete operational shutdown.
Sasovo was no ordinary storage site. It housed two supercomputers, named “Lyapunov” and “Chervonenkis,” that were crucial for training YandexGPT, the company’s AI model.
The second strike followed on October 9 at the Kaluga site, southwest of Moscow. This time the damage was partial, with several modules disabled rather than the whole facility going offline.
Ukrainian drone manufacturer Firepoint confirmed that its drones were involved in the Kaluga attack.
Taken together, the two strikes hit Yandex in two different ways. Sasovo cut into the company’s AI training capacity. Kaluga chipped away at the infrastructure behind its commercial services.
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Fallout for Yandex and its customers
Yandex acknowledged the attacks and cautioned that services could be disrupted. The company is also evaluating whether the damaged equipment can be restored at all.
The strikes caused temporary outages for Yandex Cloud services. The disruption spread to a range of clients, including major enterprises such as Russian Railways and MegaFon.
Investors registered the shift quickly. Yandex shares fell approximately 4% on the Moscow Exchange following the second strike.
Why Kyiv says it struck
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the strikes as reciprocal. In his framing, they were retaliation for earlier Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centres.
The research summarizing the strikes points to a potential shift in the conflict toward mutual targeting of digital and AI assets in both countries.
What this means
For Yandex, the most pressing question is how much AI training capacity it has lost. With the Sasovo supercomputers tied to YandexGPT, any extended shutdown could slow the company’s AI work, depending on what can be recovered and how quickly.
For its cloud customers, the episode is a stress test of resilience. Clients like Russian Railways and MegaFon depend on continuous service, and temporary outages may push enterprises to rethink how much they rely on any single provider or facility.
The next things to watch are fairly concrete. Yandex’s assessment of whether the damaged Sasovo and Kaluga equipment can be restored will indicate how long the disruption lasts. Any further outages at Yandex Cloud would show whether the damage is spreading beyond the initial strikes.