Drone strike reportedly hits Russia's largest Yandex data centre

A drone strike reportedly hit a Russian machine-tool plant in the town of Sasovo, in Ryazan region, overnight into Thursday, starting a fire and causing power problems at a Yandex data centre on the same site, Ukrainian monitoring channels and Russian independent outlet Astra reported.

Yandex, Russia's largest technology company, said it had an "incident" and power-supply problems in part of its Yandex Cloud network, adding that the disruption began at around 1:31am and had not stabilised some 40 minutes later. The company advised customers to move some services to other data centres while it worked on repairs. Yandex later told Russian outlet RBC that the situation at the site was under control and that no one was hurt.

The data centre sits on the grounds of the Sasta machine-tool plant, which makes metal-cutting and CNC machining equipment used by Russia's defence, aerospace and heavy industry sectors, according to the company and reports by The Kyiv Independent and Kyiv Post. Sasta has been under British sanctions since 2024 over its role in Russia's defence industry, and is also sanctioned by the EU, the US, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, Latvian outlet Delfi reported.

It was not clear whether the data centre, the plant, or both were the intended target, The Kyiv Independent reported. Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ said missiles or jet-powered drones were used in the strike, according to Delfi. Neither Russian regional authorities nor Ukraine's military had publicly confirmed the attack at the time of reporting.

The same night, Ukrainian drones also struck the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat oil refinery in Bashkortostan, more than 1,400km from the Ukrainian border, starting a fire there too, Delfi and Kyiv Post reported. The refinery has been hit by Ukrainian strikes before, including attacks in July and August that triggered fires and halted oil processing.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said in October he had approved a plan for long-range strikes on Russia, and has said Ukraine would respond to Russian attacks on its civilian infrastructure by targeting equivalent Russian facilities, Kyiv Post reported. The strikes followed a Russian attack on a data centre in Kyiv in late September, which Russia's defence ministry said had processed intelligence data for Ukraine's military.