Ukraine’s coordinated strikes targeted critical digital infrastructure that underpins much of Russia's consumer internet. On 7 October, a drone hit a Yandex facility in Sasovo, Ryazan region; on 9 October, another struck in Kaluga; on 11 October, a third Yandex centre was hit in Vladimir. A Sber data centre in Balakovo, Saratov region, was attacked on 14 October, and a VKontakte facility in the Leningrad region near St Petersburg was struck on 18 October.
Yandex, Sber and VKontakte together run taxi apps, payment processing, cloud storage and messaging services used by millions of Russians. Since the strikes, citizens have reported persistent difficulties paying for goods, ordering taxis, using navigation and accessing cloud storage. None of the companies has disclosed the scale of the damage.
The hits on Yandex are particularly consequential for Russia's AI development. The company's three supercomputers, housed in the damaged facilities, were among the world's top 500; the most powerful, in Sasovo, had ranked 19th globally but has since fallen below the top 100. The equipment relies on Nvidia A100 processors, which Russia cannot legally import due to Western sanctions, making replacement extremely difficult.
"Ukrainian drone strikes will probably delay the development of Russian artificial intelligence even further," said Connor Martin of the Council on Foreign Relations. Russia was already several years behind the US and China.
Analysts say the vulnerability of Russian data centres stems partly from data localisation laws. Russia’s "sovereign internet" legislation requires companies to store all data on servers inside the country, concentrating the infrastructure in a way that makes it easier to target. "Russia's problem is that it has to provide air defence over a vast territory, and it does not have enough resources for that," said Nick Reiners, senior geo-technology analyst at Eurasia Group. "Since all the infrastructure and all the data are located inside Russia, it is relatively easier to disable them."
Mikhail Klimarev, head of the Internet Protection Society, described the facilities as soft targets. "After such a strike it is hard to expect anything to have survived: data-centre equipment is fragile, demanding and expensive. Soot from fires is extremely harmful to electronics," he told AP. Klimarev also noted a paradox: the attacks may push Russian companies to move computing resources to Europe, potentially saving the Russian internet from isolation. "It is quite likely that many Russian companies are now studying the European market in search of opportunities to rent computing capacity," he said, adding that authorities might ease internet controls to limit economic damage.
The strikes come amid a broader pattern of attacks on IT infrastructure. Russia has itself been systematically targeting Ukrainian data centres this autumn. On 19 October, a Russian strike destroyed a major Datagroup facility in Kyiv beyond repair, and the following day a strike damaged Kyiv's GigaCenter. Earlier in July, a Russian strike on a Kyiv data centre disrupted internet, mobile and TV services across the city. Ukraine has since moved most of its data to servers in European countries, limiting the impact of subsequent attacks.
The targeted Russian data centres are integrated into the country's surveillance apparatus. Under SORM legislation, all domestic internet companies are legally required to install backdoors giving the FSB access to user data. VKontakte has been used extensively for state-sponsored propaganda and recruitment. The Kremlin has also used AI tools in disinformation operations, fabricating content and impersonating officials. EU sanctions prohibit supplying IT services to Russia, and Brussels has been tightening enforcement.