A drone strike has knocked out a Yandex data center in Russia's Ryazan Oblast, marking the first time a major Russian data center has been taken offline during the ongoing conflict with Ukraine. The facility, identified as Yandex DC Sasovo, is the company's largest data center and is located in the town of Sasovo, according to Ukrainian and Russian open-source intelligence specialists Exilenova+ and ASTRA.
The strike caused a fire at the data center, forcing Yandex to cease operations at the site. Yandex Cloud's status dashboard reported a power outage at its ru-central-b availability zone, with disruptions beginning at 1:31 a.m. local time and remaining ongoing. The data center is situated at the Sasta production complex, which houses machinery and assembly workshops, research and development facilities, and a foundry, and which serves the Russian defense industry, among other sectors.
While this is the first major data center to be taken down in Russia during the conflict, numerous data centers in Ukraine have been struck throughout the war, including multiple facilities in just the past few weeks. Damaged facilities have been operated by Parkovyi Data Center, MiroHost, Datagroup, Vodafone Ukraine, De Novo, Cosmonova, Omega Telecom, and Ukrtelecom, though it remains unclear whether these data centers occupy separate locations or whether any of the companies were using shared infrastructure.
Yandex currently operates five large data centers across Russia, located in Vladimir, Sasovo, Ivanteevka, Mytishchi, and in Kaluga Oblast approximately 200 miles (322 kilometers) south of Moscow. In April 2025, the company's Moscow cloud region suffered an outage following an incident with its supporting substation.
Yandex, often referred to colloquially as "Russia's Google," was previously owned by a Netherlands-based holding company but separated its European and Russian operations, fully divesting Yandex from the company in February 2024 as a strategic move following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. The European entity is now known as Nebius, a neocloud provider.
The strike on Yandex's largest data center underscores the growing vulnerability of critical digital infrastructure to military conflict and raises significant concerns about the resilience of cloud services in active war zones. As both Russian and Ukrainian data center facilities continue to sustain damage, the incident highlights the broader risks facing the region's digital economy and the increasing militarization of cyberspace and its physical underpinnings.