Ukrainian drones strike Yandex data center in Russia, disrupting cloud services
A drone attack on a Yandex facility in Sasovo caused a major fire, taking down cloud infrastructure and threatening two key AI supercomputers.
Key points
- Ukrainian drones hit Yandex's Sasovo data center, causing a massive fire and forcing a shutdown.
- The facility houses two Nvidia A100 supercomputers used for training YandexGPT and other AI models.
- Yandex Cloud services are disrupted, affecting major Russian retailers, banks, and consumer platforms.
Ukrainian drones struck a Yandex data center in Sasovo, Russia, triggering a large fire that forced the company to shut down the facility. According to Reuters, the attack has taken down many services hosted on Yandex Cloud, creating significant operational disruptions across multiple sectors in Russia.
The Sasovo site is one of Yandex’s five major data centers and contains tens of thousands of servers. Crucially, it houses two of the company’s three primary supercomputers, named Chervonenkis and Lyapunov. Both machines are built with Nvidia A100 processors and are essential for training artificial intelligence models, including YandexGPT, which is considered Russia’s leading large language model.
Context on AI Infrastructure
Chervonenkis was previously ranked as the world’s 19th most powerful supercomputer in the 2021 Top 500 list. Today, its performance of 21.53 FP64 PFLOPS would place it 101st. Due to Western sanctions, Yandex cannot upgrade this system or acquire new advanced hardware. The company’s third supercomputer, Galushkin, is located in Vladimir and remains operational.
It is currently unclear whether the supercomputers survived the fire. Analysts suggest that the extensive damage makes the survival of these Nvidia-powered systems unlikely. If destroyed, Russia’s AI industry faces severe constraints, as export restrictions already limit access to advanced accelerators. Yandex may be forced to rely on Chinese infrastructure for future model training.
Service Disruptions
Yandex Cloud customers were advised to migrate to alternative zones following the attack. While Yandex claimed its key consumer services remained operational, users reported widespread outages. Problems were noted with Yandex Mail, Disk, Documents, Pay, and Market. Other affected platforms included Cian, Litmarket, Russian Railways, Spartak Moscow, the cryptocurrency exchange Rapira, Astral, and 1C business solutions.
Corporate systems for major retailers T-Bank, Ozon, and Wildberries also experienced disruptions. A Moscow-region bus operator suspended online ticket sales. Over a 24-hour period, Detector404 registered more than 58,000 complaints related to the service outages. This follows earlier strikes by Russian missiles on Ukrainian digital infrastructure earlier this month.
What should you do?
Background: Large language models
Large language models are a specific type of neural network trained on text. Generative AI is the broader umbrella term for any system that creates new content, including images and code. Not all generative AI uses large language models, but most modern text generators do.
What to do and how to stay safe: Yandex
- Monitor official Yandex Cloud status pages for real-time updates on service availability in your region.
- Activate failover protocols to shift critical workloads to alternative cloud zones or providers if redundancy is configured.
- Verify data integrity and backups for any systems hosted in the Sasovo facility before resuming full operations.
- Contact enterprise support lines for specific guidance on service restoration timelines and alternative routing options.
General security guidance from the Threat Times newsroom. It is not confirmed advice from the organisations named in this story.
Frequently asked questions
Which specific Yandex services are affected by the drone strike?
Yandex Cloud services are down, impacting Yandex Mail, Disk, Documents, Pay, and Market, as well as third-party platforms like Ozon and Wildberries.
Are the AI supercomputers at the Sasovo facility damaged?
It is currently unclear if the Chervonenkis and Lyapunov supercomputers survived the fire, though their chances of survival are considered low due to the massive blaze.
Where is Yandex's third supercomputer located?
The third supercomputer, named Galushkin, is located in Vladimir, Russia, and is not part of the Sasovo facility.
