Ukrainian drones strike two Yandex data centers in Russia — Ars Technica

Ukrainian drones struck two of the five data centers of the Russian technology company Yandex in the Saso area and Kaluga Oblast of the Russian Federation, an aggressor state. One of the facilities housed two of the three supercomputers that Yandex uses to train the YandexGPT artificial intelligence model, Ars Technica reports.

Strikes on Yandex facilities

According to Reuters, the attacks took place on October 8 and 9. Ukrainian company Firepoint said that FP-1 drones were used in the strike on the data center in Kaluga Oblast, which is Yandex's largest facility of this type. The first target was a data center in the Saso area, where two supercomputers for training YandexGPT are located.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on the social network X that Ukraine continues to respond to Russian attacks with high precision. He also described the strike on another data center as a symmetrical response.

More current news is available on the UA.News Telegram channel Telegram.

Disruptions to online services

Yandex said that none of its employees were injured as a result of the attacks, but acknowledged disruptions to some services. According to the independent Russian outlet Meduza, users complained about problems accessing media websites, popular apps of the Ivi video service, the digital bank T-Bank, and the website of the state-owned company Russian Railways.

Reuters also reported disruptions to a dating app, a real estate aggregator, a self-publishing platform, and the website of the most successful football club in the Russian Premier League. Ars Technica notes that the attacks occurred amid Russia's campaign of strikes on Ukrainian data centers, which since late September has disrupted mobile communications and internet access for thousands of people in Ukraine.