Ukrainian Drone Strike Sets Major Yandex Data Center Ablaze in Russia
A Ukrainian drone attack sparked a fire at a major Yandex data center in Russia’s Ryazan region, forcing the facility to suspend operations.
The site, located in Sasovo, houses tens of thousands of servers and two of Yandex’s three major supercomputers used to train its YandexGPT artificial intelligence model.
Yandex said its core consumer services remained operational, but the full extent of the damage is still unclear. The company has yet to determine whether the affected equipment can be restored.
The strike marks a significant expansion of the Russia-Ukraine drone war, bringing major digital infrastructure into focus alongside energy facilities and other strategic targets.