Drone strike on Yandex's Sasovo data center pushes Yandex Cloud customers to other zones
Ukrainian drones forced Yandex to shut its Sasovo data center, one of its five major sites, knocking many Yandex Cloud services offline. For anyone hosting in Russia or Ukraine, the outage to plan for now includes losing a whole building and the hardware inside it.
The Engineer · Build desk
What happened
- Yandex says its key consumer services stayed up, but users reported problems with Yandex Mail, Disk, Documents, Pay and Market.
- Outages reportedly reached outside services including Russian Railways, the Spartak Moscow club, crypto exchange Rapira and 1C business software.
- Yandex has not disclosed whether the two AI supercomputers housed at Sasovo, two of its three, survived the fire.
- The data center occupies the former Sasta machine-tool factory, a sanctioned supplier to Russian defense-related firms, where Yandex set up operations in 2014.
- Since September 23, Russian attacks have damaged or destroyed data centers belonging to at least eight Ukrainian companies, including MiroHost and CityHost.
Why it matters
- What it costs cost Teams hosting in either country have to budget multi-site replication as a baseline cost of running there, because a single building can be lost along with its hardware.
- Who's exposed exposure Firms with no direct Yandex Cloud contract can still go dark through a supplier, so dependency maps need to record where each vendor's servers physically sit.
- What it limits constraint Under sanctions, Nvidia hardware lost in a strike may not be replaceable in kind, so a destroyed GPU site can mean training capacity that does not come back.
- Who's exposed exposure Sharing premises with a sanctioned defense supplier put Yandex's servers in the path of the strike, whatever the drones were aimed at.
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Yandex's advice to use alternative zones [18] assumes a copy of each workload is already running somewhere other than Sasovo, or can be rebuilt there from backups. A service replicated across zones fails over. A service whose only database replica was in the shut-down building has to wait for that building to reopen. I think the advice is correct, but it only helps customers who were paying for a second site before the drones arrived. Tom's Hardware, whose account draws on Reuters and Meduza [1], does not say which Yandex Cloud zone Sasovo backs, how many customers ran only there, or when the site will return.
Some of the damage reached companies through their suppliers. RBC reported that RIA Novosti, Vesti and Interfax were down following the attack on an "infrastructure partner" [6]. Meduza reported disruptions to corporate systems at T-Bank, Ozon and Wildberries [5]. A Moscow-region bus operator suspended online ticket sales, and Detector404 registered 58,268 complaints in 24 hours [2].
Replacing lost capacity is the harder problem. The two machines at Sasovo are Chervonenkis and Lyapunov, both built on Nvidia A100s [12], and Yandex has used them to train models including YandexGPT [16]. Chervonenkis ranked 19th on the Top500 in 2021. Its 21.53 FP64 PFLOPS would now place 101st [14]. That is a fall of 82 places with nobody touching the machine [21]. Western sanctions mean Yandex can no longer upgrade it [15]. A recovery plan that ends with buying replacement servers has no next step here. Tom's Hardware's assessment is that if these machines are damaged, many of their parts may be lost for good, and Yandex would have to train future models on Chinese infrastructure [23]. The third machine, Galushkin, is in Vladimir [17].
The building's history matters too. Regional authorities reported a fire at an industrial facility after the attack. It is not known whether the intended target was the old Sasta factory or Yandex's computing infrastructure [22].
Data centers are being hit on both sides. Russian missiles struck Ukrainian digital infrastructure earlier this month [7]. The torrent trackers 1337x and NordicQuality went offline for a time after the servers hosting them were damaged [8]. Ukraine is moving some digital infrastructure underground. Russian businesses are discussing deployments in countries Moscow considers friendly [20].
What to watch
- Whether Yandex discloses the condition of Chervonenkis and Lyapunov after the Sasovo fire.
- A Yandex Cloud incident report stating which zone Sasovo backed and how long single-zone customers were down.
- Whether Russian companies follow through on moving deployments to countries Moscow considers friendly.
Clarity's read
What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.
Reality
- Evidence65
- Adoption55
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives60
- Confidence60
Claim ledger
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
- [1]
Ukrainian drones hit a major Yandex data center in Sasovo, Russia, causing a massive fire and forcing the company to shut down the facility, according to Reuters and Meduza.
- [2]
A Moscow-region bus operator suspended online ticket sales, while Detector404 registered 58,268 complaints over 24 hours.
- [3]
Yandex claims its key consumer services remained operational, but users reported problems with Yandex Mail, Disk, Documents, Pay and Market.
- [4]
Other affected services reportedly included Cian, Litmarket, Russian Railways, Spartak Moscow, cryptocurrency exchange Rapira, Astral, and the 1C business solutions.
- [5]
Corporate systems operated by T-Bank, Ozon and Wildberries also experienced disruptions, according to Meduza.
- [6]
Russian media outlets including RIA Novosti, Vesti and Interfax were down following the attack on an 'infrastructure partner,' according to RBC.
- [7]
Russian missiles struck Ukrainian digital infrastructure earlier this month.
- [8]
Torrent trackers 1337x and NordicQuality temporarily went offline after servers that hosted them were damaged.
- [9]
Since September 23, Russian attacks have damaged or destroyed data centers belonging to at least eight Ukrainian companies, including Virtual Systems, MiroHost, CosmoNova, DataGroup and CityHost.
- [10]
Many services using Yandex Cloud are down following the attack.
- [11]
The Sasovo facility is one of Yandex's five major data centers and accommodates tens of thousands of servers.
- [12]
The Sasovo site houses two Nvidia A100-based supercomputers named Chervonenkis and Lyapunov, two of Yandex's three supercomputers used for AI development.
- [13]
Yandex has not disclosed whether its supercomputers at the site were affected by the strike; their fate is unclear.
- [14]
Chervonenkis was ranked the world's 19th most powerful supercomputer on the Top500 list in 2021; by today's standards its 21.53 FP64 PFLOPS is enough only for 101st place.
- [15]
Due to Western sanctions, Yandex can no longer upgrade the Chervonenkis system.
- [16]
Both Sasovo supercomputers have been used to train AI models, including YandexGPT.
- [17]
Yandex's third supercomputer, Galushkin, is located in Vladimir.
- [18]
The attack disrupted Yandex Cloud infrastructure, and the company is recommending customers use alternative zones.
- [19]
The Yandex data center occupies former premises of the Sasta machine-tool factory, where Yandex established operations in 2014; Sasta supplies industrial equipment to Russian manufacturers including defense-related enterprises and is under Western sanctions.
- [20]
Ukraine is moving some digital infrastructure underground, while Russian businesses are discussing deployments in countries considered friendly by Moscow.
- [21]
Chervonenkis has fallen 82 places on the Top500, from 19th in 2021 to a performance level that would rank 101st today.
- [22]
Regional authorities reported a fire at an industrial facility following the attack; it remains unknown whether the intended target was the factory or Yandex's computing infrastructure.
- [23]
If the machines are destroyed or damaged, many of their elements may be lost forever, and Yandex will be forced to use Chinese infrastructure for future model training.
Sources
2 independent publishers whose own reporting we read for this story.
- mezha.netАтака на дата-центр «Яндекса» спричинила масштабні збої в Росії
2 articles · October 8, 2026
- tomshardware.comUkrainian drones hit Russia's Yandex data centers housing two top supercomputers
1 article · October 8, 2026
Topics and entities
Topics
- Attacks on digital infrastructure
- AI hardware export controls
- Cloud resilience