Ukraine Hits Third Yandex Data Centre in a Week as Drone Campaign Targets Russian Tech Infrastructure

Ukraine has carried out a fresh drone strike on a data centre belonging to Yandex, forcing the Russian technology company to suspend operations at the facility near Moscow. The attack, confirmed by Yandex on Sunday, marks the third time in a single week that the company's infrastructure has been targeted, underscoring Kyiv's expanding campaign against sites it says help sustain Moscow's war effort.

According to Yandex, the data centre damaged in the strike is located in Vladimir, a city east of the Russian capital. The company said no one was hurt in the incident, but acknowledged that the damage disrupted services for some users. In a statement posted on Telegram, Yandex said operations at the site had been "completely suspended," though it added that teams were working to restore connectivity as quickly as possible.

The strike followed two earlier attacks on Yandex facilities. On Thursday, a data centre in Sasovo was hit, and on Friday, another facility in Kaluga, south-west of Moscow, was damaged. Together, the three incidents have affected two of the company's five data centres, a concentration of damage that has placed significant strain on its ability to keep services running smoothly.

Yandex, often described as "Russia's Google," operates a vast portfolio of digital services used by tens of millions of people daily. These include a search engine, an AI chatbot, smart home devices, a food-ordering platform and a taxi app. The company said this week that its data centres are critical to the normal functioning of these services and warned that it was "very difficult to predict" when full capacity would be restored.

The repeated strikes have already caused visible disruption. Yandex confirmed that some services, including its AI chatbot and smart home products, experienced problems after the earlier attacks. The company has not yet provided a detailed timeline for repairs, and the cumulative effect of three hits in quick succession raises questions about how resilient its remaining infrastructure can be if the campaign continues.

Kyiv has framed the attacks as part of a broader strategy to target economic assets that generate revenue for the Kremlin's military operations. Ukrainian officials argue that by striking facilities such as data centres, they can force Russia to divert resources toward repairs and away from the front lines. The Yandex campaign fits a pattern of recent Ukrainian strikes on energy and industrial targets deep inside Russian territory.

The timing of Sunday's attack is notable. It came just hours after US President Donald Trump publicly urged Ukraine to "damn well stop" attacking Russian oil refineries, arguing that Moscow should be allowed to release more diesel onto the global market. That intervention has drawn criticism from European allies and sparked a diplomatic row with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, highlighting growing tensions over the direction and intensity of Ukraine's long-range strike campaign.

Trump's comments have added a new layer of uncertainty to the strategic calculations in Kyiv. While Washington has been a vital military backer of Ukraine, the US president's suggestion that certain Russian energy infrastructure should be spared has alarmed officials in Europe who see such strikes as a legitimate means of pressuring Moscow. The dispute also comes as the war enters its fifth year following Russia's full-scale invasion, with both sides escalating attacks on infrastructure.

The human cost of the conflict continued to mount over the weekend. Ukraine's State Emergency Service reported that six people were injured in Russian attacks overnight across four districts of the south-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region. On Saturday, local officials confirmed that at least 20 people, including four children, were killed in Russian strikes on the city of Zaporizhzhia.

Russia has also targeted Ukrainian data infrastructure during the war, causing internet outages and prompting some Ukrainian firms to relocate their servers abroad. The mutual targeting of digital and energy infrastructure reflects a conflict in which civilian technology and economic assets have become intertwined with military strategy, leaving ordinary users on both sides to bear the consequences of disrupted services.

For Yandex, the week's events represent one of the most serious operational challenges it has faced since the war began. The company has sought to present a calm front, emphasising that no employees were injured and that restoration work is under way. But the loss of two of its five data centres in a matter of days is a significant blow, particularly for services that depend on continuous, low-latency connectivity.

The strikes also raise broader questions about the vulnerability of concentrated digital infrastructure in wartime. Data centres are difficult and expensive to rebuild quickly, and repeated attacks can degrade a company's capacity in ways that become more acute over time. If Ukraine continues to target Yandex facilities, the company may be forced to consider decentralising its operations or relocating critical systems beyond the reach of drone strikes.

Analysts note that the choice of Yandex as a target carries symbolic as well as practical weight. The company is one of the most recognisable names in Russian technology and a key part of the country's digital ecosystem. Striking it sends a message that even the most prominent civilian tech firms are not immune, while also imposing real costs that ripple through the daily lives of millions of Russian users.

As the weekend drew to a close, there was no sign of either side scaling back its attacks. Russian strikes on Ukrainian cities continued, and Ukrainian forces appeared determined to press their advantage against high-value targets inside Russia despite the diplomatic friction with Washington. The coming days will reveal whether Yandex can restore its services and whether Ukraine's campaign against Russian tech infrastructure will intensify further.