The Ukrainian military struck a second computer facility belonging to Russian internet giant Yandex on Friday, hitting infrastructure in the Kaluga region southwest of Moscow. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy confirmed the operation, calling it a direct response to Russian attacks on data hubs inside Ukraine.
The strike on Yandex’s facility in Kaluga followed a similar drone operation a day earlier that disabled the company’s data hub in Sasovo within the Ryazan region. Together, the back-to-back attacks target the core digital infrastructure of a firm, threatening services relied upon by millions of everyday users and corporate clients.
Kaluga Facility Damaged as Drones Hit Modules
Friday’s strike left several modules of the Kaluga computer center completely out of operation, according to an official corporate statement released by Yandex. The technology company warned that the damage could cause certain digital services to operate with difficulties.
Emergency services rushed to the scene immediately following the explosions, while internal specialists began assessing the full scale of the structural harm. Vladislav Shapsha, the regional governor of Kaluga, reported that nine people sustained injuries during the regional drone activity, with five individuals receiving hospital treatment.
As a result of the drone attack, part of the infrastructure of the Yandex data center in Kaluga was damaged. Several modules of the center have ceased to function in their entirety. For this reason, part of Yandex services may work with difficulties.
Yandex corporate statement
Volodymyr Zelenskiy Confirms Tit-for-Tat Strategy
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy openly acknowledged the operation on social media, framing the expanding aerial campaign as a deliberate exchange of blows. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy defended the strategy while addressing reporters regarding the ongoing exchange of long-range strikes against technological targets.
The military maneuver follows a series of Russian bombardments throughout September that targeted data centers and telecommunications networks across Kyiv and other Ukrainian regions. Russian military leadership had previously asserted that those targeted facilities supported the Ukrainian armed forces.
Strike on Sasovo Data Hub Drops Yandex Shares
The preceding day’s strike in the Ryazan region hit the Sasovo data hub. That facility hosted two of the three supercomputers built around Nvidia A100 chips used to train the YandexGPT large language model.
Market analysts warn that the cascading disruptions extend far beyond consumer applications. The vulnerability of corporate users who depend on cloud hosting was highlighted.
Following the announcements, Yandex shares fell sharply on the Moscow exchange, down 4.5%. In response to the infrastructure crisis, the firm negotiated emergency agreements with alternative cloud providers to help commercial clients migrate their digital operations away from compromised servers.
