Russia called its strikes on Ukrainian data centers a ‘forced digital detox.’ Zelensky says Kyiv has answered by hitting a data center belonging to Russian tech giant Yandex.

Ukraine is responding in kind to Russian strikes, including attacks on data centers, President Volodymyr Zelensky said. He was commenting on a Ukrainian strike on a Yandex data center in Russia’s Ryazan region, RBC-Ukraine reported.

“Data centers — you all know they’ve been hitting our data centers and they still are. We hit back. I can’t give you all the details,” Zelensky said.

Speaking to journalists, Zelensky referred to a Russian strike on Pryluky that killed 29 people, including five children, and a strike on Kramatorsk that killed more than 30 people.

He said Ukraine would respond to these strikes but stressed that Kyiv would never target children.

Overnight on October 8, Ukrainian forces carried out a drone strike on a Yandex data center in the town of Sasovo in Russia’s Ryazan region. A fire broke out. No one was hurt, but the data center shut down completely. By the evening of October 8, Yandex said it still did not know whether the equipment could be restored — “the extent of the damage to the infrastructure is still being assessed.” After the strike, users began reporting disruptions to Yandex services, media websites, and other services operated by Avito, IVI, MegaFon, Russian Railways, T-Bank, and several real estate developers.

Russia has regularly struck data centers in Ukraine in recent weeks. Since late September, Russian forces have damaged or destroyed data centers belonging to at least eight companies. Russia’s Defense Ministry called these strikes “a forced digital detox.”