Yandex's largest Russian data center crippled by Ukrainian drone strike
A major facility in Kaluga operated by the Russian tech giant has been damaged in a drone attack, with multiple modules taken offline and internal services disrupted.
Ukraine has struck another significant target in Russia's digital infrastructure. Following a recent attack on a Yandex data center in Sasovo, a much larger facility operated by the same company in Kaluga has been hit by drones, forcing multiple operational sections to shut down entirely.
According to United24 Media, the Kaluga installation sits within the Grabtsevo industrial park and was intended to serve as Yandex's most expansive data center across Russia. The complex began operations during the second half of 2023, making it less than three years old at the time of the strike.
The scale of the facility underscores its strategic importance. Spanning approximately 1.4 million square feet (130,000 square meters), the campus draws 63 megawatts of power—roughly 50 percent more than several other Yandex-operated centers. The complex houses over 3,800 server racks, a capacity that likely made it an attractive objective for Ukrainian drone operations, though whether the facility was deliberately targeted remains unconfirmed.
Yandex designed the Kaluga center to house its internal services and support expansion of its cloud business. Russian state media outlet TASS acknowledged the damage, reporting that "Several modules of the Yandex data center in Kaluga have been completely taken out of operation as a result of a UAV attack, [Yandex] reports."
The impact on Russian users remains unclear, though the earlier Sasovo strike demonstrated how such attacks ripple through consumer-facing services. That incident disrupted Yandex Mail, Disk, Documents, Pay, and Market, even as the company maintained that essential systems remained operational.
The Kaluga strike represents the latest in an escalating campaign targeting digital infrastructure on both sides of the conflict. Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian facilities earlier this month knocked the world's second-largest torrent tracker offline.
