Drone Hits a Yandex Data Center: the First Such Attack on Russia — What Went Down and What We Still Do Not Know
Yandex said a drone attack caused a fire at its data center near Sasovo, in the Ryazan region, and that the facility stopped operating entirely; a Ukrainian source says Kyiv was behind the strike.
On October 8 a drone caused a fire at a Yandex data center near Sasovo, in the Ryazan region, about 300 kilometers east of Moscow, a company spokesperson said. Yandex says the facility stopped operating entirely and some services may be unavailable. There are no casualties, and emergency services are on site. The company did not say where the drone came from. Yandex runs Russia’s most popular search engine and food-ordering and taxi apps; Downdetector Russia showed a large spike in outage reports.
Ryazan governor Pavel Malkov wrote on Telegram that two Ukrainian drones were shot down over the region overnight and that the roof of a business near Sasovo caught fire. Andriy Kovalenko, a former head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, wrote that Ukrainian forces struck the data center. According to a Liga.net headline, Zelensky confirmed Ukraine carried out the strike and said “we always respond in kind.” Kyiv also claims to have hit a major oil refinery, which could not be independently verified.
Kuwait Times calls the strike “the first of its kind on Russia.” Both sides have recently stepped up long-range attacks: Russia recently targeted Ukrainian data centers and logistics warehouses, while Ukrainian targets have included energy systems, railways, telecom networks and grain exports. What is unclear: how much damage was done, how long the outage will last and what the facility housed.
MKNews Hub · Macedonia · October 12, 2026
