Ukrainian drones hit Yandex data centers, shutting down a key AI-training site

Ukrainian drone strikes hit two Yandex data centers in Russia on October 8–9, shutting down a facility that houses much of the company’s AI-training hardware. Yandex said its Sasovo site was completely offline and part of its Kaluga infrastructure was out of service, leaving teams working to keep online services running.

A shutdown at the AI-training site

In its October 9 statement, Yandex said the Sasovo data center was seriously damaged during an attack overnight October 7–8. The next attack hit Kaluga on the morning of October 9. The company described different levels of disruption: a complete shutdown in Sasovo, compared with only part of the infrastructure being out of service in Kaluga.

Sasovo houses two of Yandex’s three supercomputers used to train YandexGPT, its AI model, according to Ars Technica. That makes the affected site significant for AI development, not just for hosting online services. Yandex’s statement describes the shutdown of the facility but does not give a damage assessment for those individual machines.

No employees were hurt at either location, Yandex said. Emergency services and company specialists were working at the sites while the company continued assessing its infrastructure. Its recovery effort therefore includes both the work on damaged facilities and the separate task of keeping services available to users, customers and partners.

We are continuing to assess the condition of our infrastructure. For now, it is very difficult to say when the equipment at the data centers will be back up and running.

The Yandex Team, October 9 statement

The disruption reaches everyday services

Yandex acknowledged service disruptions. The company says millions use its services for traffic, routes, music, movies, groceries and answers. It also says hundreds of thousands of companies use its technology to take orders, serve customers and work with partners.

Meduza, in reporting cited by Ars Technica, said Russian users had trouble accessing Ivi, T-Bank and Russian Railways. Reuters also reported problems with a dating app, a real estate aggregator, a self-publishing book platform and a professional soccer club’s website. The reported effects reached entertainment, banking and transport, as well as Yandex’s AI tools.

Zelenskyy frames the strikes as retaliation

The attacks followed Russian strikes on Ukrainian data centers and telecommunications facilities over the preceding month, including targets in central Kyiv. Al Jazeera’s AFP and Reuters account said damage had forced some services to suspend operations. An attack also left roughly 100,000 households with temporary internet outages, illustrating the civilian disruption already associated with this exchange of strikes.

After the Sasovo strike on October 8, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the action as a response to those attacks. “We always respond in mirror-like fashion,” he said. He added that Russia continued to hit Ukraine’s data centers and that Ukraine was responding, while declining to share all the details.

Drone maker Firepoint said its FP-1 one-way attack drones were involved in the Kaluga strike, according to Reuters reporting cited by Ars Technica. That is the manufacturer’s attributed account of its involvement, separate from Yandex’s confirmation of damage and operational disruption at the facility.