Ukrainian Drones Strike Yandex and Sberbank Data Centers

Ukrainian drone strikes targeted critical Russian digital infrastructure between October 8 and 11, 2026, hitting data centers operated by Yandex and Sberbank. Three Yandex facilities in the Ryazan, Kaluga, and Vladimir regions sustained damage, causing widespread outages for Yandex Go, Yandex Pay, and the Alisa AI assistant. The attacks also disrupted third-party businesses including Cian, M.Video, and Dom.ru, with service interruptions extending to users in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

The strikes specifically impacted Yandex's AI capabilities, as the targeted facilities housed two of the three supercomputers used to train the YandexGPT model. In a separate operation, a drone hit a Sberbank data center in Balakovo, Saratov region. While Sberbank reported no service interruptions, the strike killed one person in a nearby residential building.

Russia's Minister of Digital Development, Maksut Shadayev, announced coordination with the Defense Ministry to enhance protections for data centers. Yandex has since partnered with alternative cloud providers to migrate corporate client data. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated the government is discussing the fallout from the disruptions.