Ukraine’s drones knock out AI data center belonging to "Russia’s Google"

Ukrainian drone strikes have taken out two of Yandex’s five data centers, a nasty hit for the Russian tech giant best known for running the country’s top search engine. The company is often called “Russia’s Google,” and this time the nickname comes with real operational pain: its AI chatbot and other online services are under strain.

The damaged sites are in the Sasovo and Kaluga regions of Russia. According to Reuters, the strikes landed on October 8 and October 9. That timing matters because the attacks weren’t random vandalism; they were a direct reply to Russian drone strikes against Ukraine’s own data centers.

Those Russian strikes have already disrupted mobile phone and internet services for thousands of Ukrainians since late September. So the exchange has moved beyond battlefield hardware and into the systems that keep people online, connected, and able to use everyday digital services.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy framed the attack in those terms on X, calling it a “high precision” response and adding that another data center was hit in a “symmetrical response.” The message was blunt: if Russia goes after infrastructure, Ukraine is willing to answer in kind.