Yandex Was Unable To Provide A Timeline For The Restoration Of The “iron Heart”
- 9.10.2026, 14:00
Two data centers were taken out of service following drone attacks.
Strikes by Ukrainian drones put two Yandex data centers out of commission: in Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast, the facility completely ceased operations, while the one in Kaluga was partially damaged, the company reported. “Data centers are the ‘iron heart’ of Yandex. Their operational capability is critical for the services that have become part of people’s daily lives. We are continuing to assess the condition of the infrastructure—at this point, it is very difficult to specify a timeline for restoring operations at the data centers,”—the company’s statement reads.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) attacked the center in Sasovo on the night of October 8, and a day later—in Kaluga. The raids caused fires at the facilities, but no employees were injured. Following this, a large-scale outage occurred in the Russian segment of the internet, affecting the services of major banks, the Russian Railways (RZD) website, state media outlets, grocery retailers, and electronics retailers. Some Yandex services also experienced disruptions. The company has a total of five data centers. Four of them are located in Russia—in Sasovo, Kaluga, Mytishchi, and Vladimir—and one is in Finland. The latter was cut off from the power grid due to sanctions.
The Ukrainian army began striking Yandex facilities after the Russian army attacked the Datagroup data center in Kyiv in late September. The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that the facility “processed and transmitted intelligence data on behalf of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that Kyiv would respond symmetrically to Russian shelling.
Any technological hubs in Russia could be at risk, but the country is not facing the threat of a total digital blackout, noted Sarkis Darbinyan, an expert at RKS.global, in a conversation with “Meduza.” According to him, the infrastructure of modern IT companies is distributed throughout the country, so if equipment fails, traffic and customers are automatically redirected to backup facilities. There are about 200 data centers in Russia, and taking them all offline would be an extremely ambitious task, Darbinyan emphasized. At the same time, the expert acknowledged the possibility of further targeted attacks on regional sites belonging to Rostelecom, Sberbank, VK, and Selectel.