A fire broke out at Yandex’s data center in the city of Sasovo in the Ryazan region during a Ukrainian overnight drone attack. The facility’s operations were completely halted, and no casualties were reported.
Yandex said emergency crews were working to contain the damage and that activities at the data center had been suspended. The fire caused disruptions to some of the company’s services.
Fire at the data center in Sasovo
Ryazan Region Governor Pavel Malkov said a fire had broken out on the roof of an unnamed company in the Sasovo district. The fire was linked to the attack at Yandex’s data center.
NASA’s FIRMS fire-monitoring service also detected a fire in Sasovo early Thursday morning. The data showed that the fire occurred during the same period as the attack.
Yandex services disrupted
More than 1,300 user reports concerning Yandex Cloud, Yandex Documents and Yandex Tables were recorded on an outage-tracking platform. The company’s main consumer applications, including its search engine and taxi service, remained online.
Yandex shares fell more than 3.4% in trading on the Moscow Exchange on Thursday morning. No timetable was announced for how long the data center would remain closed.
Russia says it intercepted 399 Ukrainian drones
Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defense systems had intercepted 399 Ukrainian drones over 18 regions of the country and Crimea overnight. The fire in Sasovo occurred during this wave of attacks.
The incident was described as the first confirmed attack on data infrastructure in Russia since the war began in 2022. It came after claims that Moscow’s forces had struck at least eight major data centers in Kyiv since late September.
Russia had alleged that the data centers targeted in Kyiv processed military intelligence for Ukrainian forces. Those attacks reportedly caused widespread internet disruptions in Ukraine.
