Ukraine strikes Yandex data center in Russia, sparking fire
Update. Yandex confirmed that Ukrainian drones struck its data center in Sasovo. The strike sparked a fire that damaged part of the infrastructure. No one was injured, and the data center has been completely shut down; some Yandex services may be unavailable to users.
A fire broke out at the Sasta machine-tool plant in Sasovo, Ryazan region, which houses one of Yandex’s data centers, the independent Telegram channel Astra reported. Journalists reached that conclusion after analyzing photos and videos from eyewitnesses.
Ukrainian monitoring Telegram channels Exilenova+ and Supernova+ claimed the fire started after a Ukrainian strike. Russia’s Defense Ministry listed the Ryazan region among the areas where air defenses shot down Ukrainian drones overnight on October 8. Local authorities have not reported on the aftermath of the attack.
Yandex said “an incident occurred at the Sasovo data center that affected part of the infrastructure.” The company added: “The situation at the site is now under control, and no one was injured. The team is addressing the aftermath of the incident and restoring the affected services.”
After the attack, several Russian websites became unavailable, the independent Russian broadcaster TV Rain reported. They included the auto-posting platform Postmypost and the Ryazan region edition of Komsomolskaya Pravda, a pro-Kremlin Russian tabloid.
Yandex’s data center in Sasovo opened in 2014 on part of the former premises of the Sasta plant, a maker of pipe-threading machines. The plant supplies products to Russian machine-building enterprises and exports some abroad.
In September, the Russian military carried out several strikes on Ukrainian data centers. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed these centers “process and transmit intelligence data for the Ukrainian armed forces” and also threatened Ukraine with a “digital detox.”
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.