Yandex, a Russian technology and artificial intelligence company, has halted operations at a data centre in Vladimir, a city east of Moscow, after a drone strike. The company said on Sunday that the facility was hit but that it had not recorded any casualties.
Emergency crews are at the site, and several Yandex services are currently unavailable to users while the firm assesses how to restore them. In a service alert posted on Telegram, the company told customers to activate their disaster-recovery plans, as the platform is running in emergency mode. It also described the remaining system setup as unstable and warned that technical support could be disrupted while staff evaluate the damage.
Vladimir strike marks third attack in a week
The Vladimir incident is the third assault on Yandex’s data centres in the past week, reflecting how Russia and Ukraine are intensifying strikes on each other’s digital infrastructure. Yandex plays a major role in Russia’s AI development and is sometimes nicknamed “Russia’s Google”.
On Friday, the company said its data centre in the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow, had been struck by Ukrainian drones and partly disabled.
Sasovo hub hit as Zelenskyy vows response
A day earlier, an attack the Ukrainian side is linked to shut down Yandex’s hub in Sasovo, southeast of Moscow. Two of the three supercomputers the company uses to develop its AI model are housed there.
On Thursday, following the Sasovo strike, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine would respond in kind. He said Russia had been hitting Ukrainian data centres and that he could not disclose every detail of Ukraine’s response.
Separately, Russia has struck several Ukrainian data centres and telecommunications facilities over the past month, including targets in central Kyiv. The apparent aim is to disrupt the country’s connectivity and digital commerce.
