Ukraine Hits Another Yandex Data Centre as Drone Campaign Against Russian Tech Giant Intensifies

A Ukrainian drone strike has damaged a Yandex data centre in the town of Vladimir, east of Moscow, forcing the Russian technology company to suspend operations at the facility entirely. The company confirmed the incident on its Telegram channel, stating that no employees or other individuals were harmed in the attack, but that services dependent on the site had become unavailable to users.

The strike marks the third time this week that infrastructure belonging to Yandex, widely described as "Russia's Google," has been targeted. According to the company, personnel were working to restore connectivity after operations at the Vladimir site were "completely suspended." The disruption left some customers unable to access certain services, though Yandex did not specify the full scope of the outage.

Earlier in the week, Yandex acknowledged it was struggling to keep its services running normally after two of its five data centres were damaged in separate Ukrainian attacks. Those strikes occurred on Thursday in Sasovo and on Friday in Kaluga, a city south-west of Moscow. Together with the Vladimir incident, the three attacks represent an unusually concentrated campaign against a single corporate target.

The consequences have been visible to ordinary users. Yandex said the earlier strikes caused problems for some of its offerings, including its AI chatbot and its smart home devices. The company has described its data centres as critical to the normal functioning of its services and warned that it was "very difficult to predict" when the affected facilities would be fully back online.

Yandex operates a vast ecosystem that reaches tens of millions of people across Russia. Beyond its flagship search engine, the company runs a popular taxi-hailing app and a food-ordering platform, along with a range of digital services that have become deeply embedded in daily life. Disruptions to its infrastructure therefore carry consequences that extend well beyond a single company's balance sheet.

Kyiv has framed its targeting of such sites as part of a broader strategy aimed at cutting off revenue streams that help sustain Moscow's war effort. Ukrainian officials argue that strikes on economically significant infrastructure can force Russia to divert resources toward repairs and away from the battlefield, imposing costs that accumulate over time.

The attack came just hours after US President Donald Trump publicly urged Ukraine to "damn well stop" striking Russian oil refineries. Trump argued that halting those attacks would allow Moscow to release more diesel onto the global market, a position that has drawn sharp criticism from European allies and triggered a diplomatic dispute with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

That disagreement has added a new layer of tension to the relationship between Kyiv and its Western supporters. Trump's comments followed a deal that critics say could ease pressure on Russia's energy sector, and the ensuing row has highlighted diverging priorities as the war approaches the end of its fifth year since Russia's full-scale invasion.

Both sides have escalated attacks on infrastructure in recent months, with neither showing signs of pulling back. Ukraine has concentrated on industrial and energy targets inside Russia, while Russian forces have continued to strike Ukrainian cities and critical facilities, including data centres. Those Russian strikes have caused internet outages in Ukraine and prompted some businesses to relocate their servers abroad.

The human cost on the Ukrainian side has remained severe. The State Emergency Service of Ukraine reported that six people were injured in Russian attacks overnight across four districts of the south-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region. The strikes are part of a sustained pattern of overnight bombardment that has repeatedly hit civilian areas.

The casualties have been particularly heavy in Zaporizhzhia. Local officials confirmed that at least 20 people, including four children, were killed in Russian attacks on the city on Saturday. The toll underscored the continued vulnerability of Ukrainian population centres despite ongoing international efforts to secure some form of de-escalation.

The repeated targeting of Yandex raises questions about the resilience of Russia's domestic digital infrastructure. Concentrating critical services in a small number of data centres creates efficiency but also introduces single points of failure, a vulnerability that Ukraine appears to be exploiting deliberately. Each successful strike forces the company to reroute traffic, restore hardware and reassure users.

For Yandex itself, the attacks present both operational and reputational challenges. A company whose value proposition rests on reliability must now contend with visible outages affecting everyday tools, from chatbots to home automation. Restoring service quickly is essential, but repeated strikes could complicate efforts to guarantee the continuity that customers expect.

The broader strategic picture remains unsettled. Ukraine's drone campaign against Russian corporate and industrial targets is intended to raise the economic price of the war, while Moscow's strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure aim to degrade morale and capacity. With diplomatic tensions flaring between Kyiv and Washington over energy policy, the coming weeks are likely to bring further attacks and further disruption on both sides.