MOSCOW, 08 Oct. - (ANA) - A data centre of Yandex, dubbed "Russian Google", was reportedly struck by drones overnight. The company said the attack caused a fire and forced it to fully suspend operations at the centre, though its core consumer services were not affected. Yandex, which runs one of Russia's leading generative AI models, added that it is still dealing with the consequences and restoring affected services.

 

The Yandex Cloud service website said there were problems with the electricity supply in one data centre "zone" and recommended that customers use other zones.

 

In an update on Thursday morning, it said: "The ru-central1-b zone remains unavailable. We have completed all necessary work to switch the load to other availability zones. All services in the remaining zones are operating normally.

 

"Currently, the creation of new resources in the cloud infrastructure may be limited. If you have any questions, please contact technical support. Our specialists are continuing to work to resolve the incident. We will return with an update by 3:00 PM Moscow time.

 

OSINT groups identified the data centre as Yandex DC Sasovo in the city of Sasovo, described as Yandex's largest data centre supporting its services and cloud infrastructure.

 

The Sasovo data centre is on the grounds of the Sasta machine-tool plant, which has been under UK sanctions since 2024 for its role in Russia's defence sector.

 

It manufactures metal-cutting and high-precision CNC metalworking machines used across Russia, including the defence-industrial, aerospace, oil and gas, and heavy machinery sectors.

 

Sasta says it includes machining and assembly workshops, a foundry, and research and development facilities, and that its equipment is used by Russia's defence industry.

 

Ryazan Governor Pavel Malkov previously described the complex as a high-tech facility housing tens of thousands of servers that rapidly process requests across Yandex's services.

 

The Russian Defence Ministry said 399 Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight, intercepted across 21 regions and over the Black Sea.

 

Some 59 UAVs were neutralised over the Belgorod, Bryansk, Kaluga, Kursk, Rostov, Smolensk, Tver and Tula regions, and Crimea and the Black Sea. In the Kursk region, Russia downed 197 drones. - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/08 October 2026 - - -