Ukraine struck and partly disabled a major data centre operated by Russian technology company Yandex on Friday in the second such action in successive days, widening the scope of its attacks inside Russia after Moscow hit data hubs in Ukraine.
Yandex, which is heavily involved in Russia’s AI development and is sometimes called Russia’s Google, said its data centre in the Kaluga region southwest of Moscow had been struck by Ukrainian drones and partly put out of action.
Ukrainian arms maker Firepoint said Kyiv had used its FP-1 one-way attack drones to mount the strike against what it called Yandex’s biggest data centre and said that several of its modules had been completely knocked out of action.
A day earlier, a Ukrainian attack shut down Yandex’s data hub in Sadovo, southeast of Moscow, where two of the three supercomputers used to develop the company’s AI model are housed.
Yandex said it was facing a difficult challenge to maintain its services, used by millions of Russians daily for navigation, music, movies, food orders and other tasks. It also provides cloud computing services on which many businesses depend.
Alexander Savitsky, who runs a start-up dating app called Pulse with 8,000 users, told Reuters that none of them had been able to access it since Thursday.
He said the company was unable to reach its backup database in Yandex Cloud and was getting an “internal error” message when trying to restore it elsewhere.
“We have no confirmation of actual data loss, but the situation is serious: the project represents three years of work,” Savitsky said.
“The main risk is losing users and their trust: people can’t use the app, and there’s no telling how many will return once service is restored.”
Yandex said it had struck a deal with other cloud providers to enable clients to swiftly move their data and services. Its shares fell by more than 4% on the Moscow exchange.
“The risks involve not only the potential temporary unavailability of Yandex services and lost revenue in specific segments but also the company’s extensive base of B2B clients,” said Maryana Lazaricheva, head of equity research at T-Investments.
