Yandex data center in Russia's Ryazan region shut down after Ukrainian drone strike, fire
In short
A Yandex data center in Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast, caught fire after a drone attack from Ukraine in the early hours of October 8 local time and stopped operating entirely, outlets reported. The facility holds tens of thousands of servers providing cloud services to Yandex, Russian government agencies and other companies, as well as two supercomputers Yandex uses to train AI models; the company has not said whether the supercomputers were affected. Yandex said no one was injured, moved cloud workloads to other availability zones and said it could not yet confirm whether the equipment on site can be restored.
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A data center of the Russian search engine Yandex in the city of Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast, caught fire and stopped operating after a drone attack from Ukraine, Landian reported. The outlet said the affected facility is infrastructure owned by Yandex Cloud and used by Yandex and other Russian technology companies. OSChina, citing Reuters, likewise reported that the Yandex data center in Sasovo was struck by a Ukrainian drone on October 8 and that operations were fully suspended after the fire. [ 1 , 3 ]
The attack took place in the early hours of October 8 local time, Landian and cnBeta reported. Yandex initially reported that its ru-central1-b availability zone had been interrupted by a power supply problem. The company later confirmed that a fire caused by the drone attack had shut down the entire data center. [ 1 , 2 ]
The reports describe the facility as important for Yandex and for Russia as a whole. It contains tens of thousands of conventional servers providing cloud computing services to Yandex, Russian government agencies and other companies. It also houses two supercomputers Yandex uses to train AI models. Yandex has not said whether those supercomputers were affected. OSChina, citing Reuters, said the center is one of Yandex's five large data centers and holds two of the company's three supercomputers used to develop AI models. [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]
Yandex initially said the situation on site was under control, no one was injured and a specialist team was assessing losses and handling the aftermath. The company also said the extent of the damage to the infrastructure was being evaluated and that it could not yet confirm whether the equipment on site could be restored. The affected availability zone remained in an abnormal state in which resources could not be created, the reports said. [ 1 , 2 ]
In response, Yandex switched its cloud service workloads to other availability zones. Its consumer-facing services were generally operating normally, although some services could experience access problems. Other affected cloud resources included cloud servers, databases and the YandexGPT API. [ 1 , 2 ]
Why it matters
According to the reports, the data center serves not only Yandex but Russian government agencies and other companies, and it hosts two of the three supercomputers Yandex uses to develop AI models. Yandex said the extent of the damage is still being assessed and that the affected availability zone remains abnormal, so the scale of the disruption to Russian cloud and AI infrastructure is not yet known.
Key facts
- A Yandex data center in Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast, caught fire after a drone attack from Ukraine and halted operations entirely. [ 1 , 3 ]
- The attack took place in the early hours of October 8 local time. [ 1 , 2 ]
- Yandex first reported a power supply outage in its ru-central1-b availability zone, then confirmed the data center had stopped operating because of a fire caused by the drone attack. [ 1 , 2 ]
- The data center houses tens of thousands of servers providing cloud computing to Yandex, Russian government agencies and other companies. [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]
- The site also holds two supercomputers Yandex uses to train AI models; Yandex has not said whether they were affected. [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]
- Yandex said the situation was under control and no one was injured, but that it could not yet confirm whether the equipment can be restored. [ 1 , 2 ]
- Yandex switched cloud workloads to other availability zones; consumer-facing services were generally running normally, though some could have access problems. [ 1 , 2 ]
- Citing Reuters, OSChina reported the facility is one of Yandex's five large data centers and hosts two of its three AI supercomputers. [ 3 ]
Confirmed by several sources
- A Yandex data center in Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast, was hit by a drone attack from Ukraine, caught fire and stopped operating completely. [ 1 , 3 ]
- The data center contains tens of thousands of servers and two supercomputers used by Yandex to train AI models, and Yandex has not said whether the supercomputers were affected. [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]
Still unclear
- Whether the two AI-training supercomputers at the site were damaged. All three outlets say Yandex has not stated whether the supercomputers were affected.
- Whether the equipment at the data center can be restored. Yandex said the extent of the damage is still being assessed and it cannot yet confirm whether the equipment on site can be recovered.
- That the facility is one of Yandex's five large data centers and holds two of its three supercomputers. Reported only by OSChina, citing Reuters, in a feed summary.
- The attack occurred in the early hours of October 8 local time; Yandex initially reported a power supply problem in the ru-central1-b availability zone before confirming the fire. Reported by a single source so far
- Yandex said no one was injured and that the extent of the infrastructure damage is being assessed. Reported by a single source so far
- Yandex moved cloud workloads to other availability zones; affected resources included cloud servers, databases and the YandexGPT API. Reported by a single source so far
What local media are saying
Timeline, local time
- Landian reports on October 9 that the Yandex data center in Sasovo stopped operating after a drone attack from Ukraine in the early hours of October 8 caused a fire. [ 1 ]
- cnBeta publishes the report, including Yandex's statements on the outage, the fire and the switch of workloads to other availability zones. [ 2 ]
- OSChina reports, citing Reuters, that the site is one of Yandex's five large data centers and holds two of its three AI supercomputers. [ 3 ]