A major data centre owned by Yandex, Russia's leading AI and technology company, was hit by suspected Ukrainian drones this week, causing a fire and forcing a full suspension of operations at the facility.
The company announced today that it was dealing with the consequences and restoring affected services, while confirming that its core consumer services were not affected. Yandex runs YandexGPT, one of Russia's leading generative AI models.
Attack follows wave of strikes on Ukrainian data centres
The attack on the Yandex data centre followed a wave of Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centres in recent weeks. Previously, there were no confirmed major Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian data centres.
On the website of its Yandex Cloud service, the company said there were problems with the electricity supply at one data centre 'zone', and recommended customers use other zones.
Military-linked metals company also hit
Yandex is 'Russia's Google,' its biggest internet technology company, operating the country's main search engine plus major cloud, mapping, taxi, delivery and other digital services.
On the same site, a major military-linked metals company, Sasta, was hit. This supplies parts to Russian tactical missiles and has been sanctioned by Britain and other Western states.
Separate attacks on refinery and oil tank farm
Separately, Ukrainian forces attacked a major refinery belonging to Gazprom, located in Salavat, 870 miles from the Ukrainian border, and one of the largest oil refining and petrochemical complexes in Russia. Ukrainian forces also attacked the Samara-2 pumping station, one of the largest oil tank farms in Europe, and crucial to Putin's dollar-earning capacity to fund his war.
After Wednesday's Russian strikes, Ukrainians were warned they could face up to 11 hours of power outages today. A new Russian drone attack on Kyiv today led to another four deaths and 21 injuries.
