STRIKE TWO

Putin’s Nightmare Deepens as More Drones Hit ‘Russia’s Google’

Ukraine’s drone strikes battered the tech giant that millions of Russians depend on.

Ukraine humiliated Vladimir Putin with drone strikes that crippled parts of the largest data center operated by Yandex, the tech giant dubbed “Russia’s Google.”

Yandex said Friday that Kyiv’s military had struck its largest data center in the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow, disabling several modules.

The attack came just a day after Ukrainian drones struck another Yandex data center in Sasovo, in the Ryazan region, sparking a fire and taking tens of thousands of servers offline.

That facility houses two of the three supercomputers used to develop the company’s AI model, delivering a major blow to the Russian dictator, more than four years into his war with Ukraine.

The escalation comes as Russia ramps up attacks on Ukrainian data centers, part of a long-range strike campaign aimed at crippling Ukraine’s economy. Kyiv is also ramping up its attacks on Russia’s crucial energy infrastructure, striking oil refineries which are critical to financing Moscow’s war effort.

Yandex said it could not confirm whether the equipment damaged in the strikes could be restored.

Western sanctions could make the damage harder to repair. The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said export controls and sanctions on Russia may hamper Yandex’s ability to quickly replace any advanced semiconductors damaged in the drone attacks.

“Data centers are the ‘iron heart’ of Yandex,” the company said in a statement on Friday. “Their performance is critical for services that have become part of everyday life.”

The company said millions of people depend on its services to check traffic and plan routes, listen to music, watch movies, order groceries, and find answers, while hundreds of thousands of businesses use its technology to handle orders and communicate with customers and partners.

UP IN FLAMES

Putin Humiliated as ‘Russia's Google’ Hit in Stunning First

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“We continue to assess the infrastructure’s condition; it’s very difficult to predict when the data center equipment will be back online,” the statement added.

In late September, Russian forces hit a Kyiv data center run by telecom company Datagroup. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed the facility processed and transmitted intelligence for Ukraine’s military. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky subsequently warned that Kyiv would respond in kind.

Yandex operates five data centers: four in Russia—in Sasovo, Kaluga, Mytishchi, and Vladimir—and one in Finland.

After the first attack, the company obscured details of its data centers on its mapping service, according to The Moscow Times. Satellite images of four facilities are no longer clearly visible, and their addresses no longer identify them as data centers.

Meanwhile, Zelensky claimed last week that Putin has ordered his military to abandon the rules of war and ramp up attacks on civilian targets.

“He said there are no rules now,” Zelensky told the Financial Times, describing intelligence that included intercepted communications from Kremlin officials.

Putin’s forces have struck civilian sites, schools, hospitals, kindergartens, residential buildings, homes, vehicles and orphanages since the war’s outset in February 2022, prompting Ukrainian and Western officials to accuse Moscow of war crimes.

Zelensky alleged that Putin has now ordered a sharp escalation in those attacks as Moscow seeks to regain the advantage in a conflict that has cost its forces heavily and yielded few recent gains.

The Kremlin has denied targeting civilian sites.

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Isabel van BrugenFreelance Writer

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