The Pulse
Drone Strike Shuts Yandex’s Sasovo Data Center
A drone strike and fire halted operations at Yandex’s Sasovo data center in Russia’s Ryazan region on October 8. The company said that some services could be unavailable from its initial Thursday-morning statement, while the extent of the d
AI.info Team · Written with AI ·
“Пострадавших нет, профильные службы на месте устраняют последствия. Работа дата-центра полностью остановлена, часть сервисов „Яндекса“ может быть недоступна для пользователей”
Yandex press service, as quoted by Interfax. Translation: “There are no casualties; specialized services are at the site dealing with the consequences. The data center’s work has been completely stopped, and some Yandex services may be unavailable to users.”
A drone strike caused a fire at Yandex’s data center in Sasovo, in Russia’s Ryazan region, on October 8, forcing a complete halt to operations at the site. In its initial statement Thursday morning, Yandex said there were no injuries, that teams were dealing with the aftermath and that some of its services might be unavailable. The company has not confirmed whether equipment at the center can be restored.
Reuters reported that the attack was the first major strike on a Russian data hub confirmed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. Yandex has not publicly identified who carried out the strike. The company said specialists were assessing the damage, but has not provided a timetable for repairs.
Shutdown and service warnings
Yandex’s initial public account described an incident that had affected part of the data center’s infrastructure. In the same Thursday-morning statement, the company said the center had stopped operating completely and warned that some services might be unavailable. That warning was not a later change to an earlier assurance: it appeared alongside the shutdown in the initial statement.
Yandex Cloud had also reported electricity-supply problems in one data-center zone and advised customers to use other zones, according to Reuters. The company’s statements do not identify all the services or equipment affected, or explain how long disruptions might last. Yandex said its core consumer services were not affected in its earlier account, while also warning that some services could be unavailable.
The Sasovo site and Yandex’s AI work
Reuters reported that Sasovo is one of Yandex’s five large data centers and hosts tens of thousands of servers. The facility also houses two of the company’s three supercomputers, which Reuters said are used to develop Yandex’s AI model. Yandex has not said whether either supercomputer was damaged.
Yandex operates YandexGPT, a generative AI model, but the company has not said whether the incident affected the model or its development. The confirmed operational impact remains the shutdown of the data center and the possibility that some services may be unavailable.
Damage assessment continues
In a later statement, Yandex said it was still assessing the damage and could not confirm whether the equipment could be restored. “The scale of the damage to the infrastructure is still being assessed,” the company said in a statement, according to Reuters. It added that it could not yet confirm whether the Sasovo data-center equipment could be restored.
The company has not announced an estimate of losses or a recovery schedule. It has also not confirmed whether the two supercomputers housed at the site were damaged. For now, Yandex’s initial notice and its later damage assessment establish that operations stopped and the state of the equipment remains uncertain.