Ukrainian Drone Strike Damages Russian Finance Ministry Data Center in Gorodets

A government data center operated by Russia's Ministry of Finance and its Federal Tax Service has been damaged in a Ukrainian drone strike, according to multiple media reports, marking the latest escalation in a widening campaign targeting digital infrastructure on both sides of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The facility, located in Gorodets in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, was struck overnight, according to reports from Exilenova+ and Astra. The data center is one of two key data processing centers of the Federal Tax Service operating in a geo-distributed mode, and it serves as a repository for state registry data, including tax databases. ExileNova+ noted that damage to the facility could potentially affect the operation of state information systems of the Russian Federation.

Gleb Nikitin, governor of the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, reported three injuries following a series of drone strikes that damaged several residential buildings, one educational facility, and one infrastructure facility. The town of Gorodets is situated approximately 425 kilometers east of Moscow and more than 900 kilometers from Russia's border with Ukraine. The data center, in development since 2012, officially opened in December 2015. The Finance Ministry is also said to operate out of the Federal Data Processing Center in Dubna in the Moscow Region and a facility in Yerzovka in the Volgograd Region.

The strike on the Gorodets facility is the latest in a sustained campaign by both Russian and Ukrainian forces targeting data center infrastructure. In recent weeks, Russian forces have hit facilities around Kyiv operated by Parkovyi Data Center, UTELS, MiroHost, Datagroup, Vodafone Ukraine, De Novo, Cosmonova, Omega Telecom, Ukrsibbank, GigaCenter, and Ukrtelecom, as well as sites operated by Tenet in Odesa and RX-Name in the Mykolaiv area of southern Ukraine. Ukraine has struck back with attacks on several data centers owned by Yandex and Sberbank, and earlier this year targeted a data center in Russian-occupied Prymorsk as well as telecom facilities in Donetsk and Luhansk.

The targeting of data centers in conflict zones underscores the growing strategic importance of digital infrastructure and the vulnerability of concentrated data processing facilities to military action. Russian officials have been discussing mitigating measures, including building "doomsday" data centers and siting facilities in disused coal mines or friendly neighboring territories. The conflict, ongoing since 2014 and significantly escalated in 2022, has increasingly focused on digital and communications infrastructure, with recent arson attacks on Starlink ground stations in Poland, Bulgaria, and Lithuania linked by officials to Russia.