A Ukrainian drone attack ignited a fire at a data center owned by Russian tech giant Yandex in the Ryazan region overnight, the company said Thursday, suspending the site’s operations and triggering service disruptions.
The attack marks the first confirmed strike against Russian data infrastructure since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, weeks after Moscow launched attacks against Ukrainian data centers.
Yandex confirmed that operations at the facility in the town of Sasovo were fully suspended while emergency teams worked to contain the damage, according to a statement circulated in the media. Governor Pavel Malkov said the roof of a Sasovo district company, which he did not name, caught fire.
No casualties were reported.
NASA’s fire monitoring service FIRMS showed a fire in Sasovo early Thursday morning.
Outage tracking platform Downdetector recorded more than 1,300 user reports of disruptions affecting Yandex Cloud, Yandex Documents and Yandex Tables, while core consumer tools like search and taxi services remained online.
Yandex shares dropped more than 3.4% during Thursday morning trading on the Moscow Exchange.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defense systems intercepted 399 Ukrainian drones over 18 Russian regions and annexed Crimea overnight.
The Sasovo attack comes after Russian forces have, since late September, hit at least eight major data centers across Kyiv, causing widespread internet blackouts in Ukraine. Russia claimed the data centers processed military intelligence for Ukrainian forces.
Reuters contributed reporting.
