Putin’s Nightmare Deepens as More Drones Hit ‘Russia’s Google’

Kristina Solovyova / via REUTERS Ukraine humiliated Vladimir Putin with drone strikes that crippled parts of the largest data center operated by Yandex, the tech giant dubbed “Russia’s Google.” Yandex said Friday that Kyiv’s military had struck its largest data center in the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow, disabling several modules.

The attack came just a day after Ukrainian drones struck another Yandex data center in Sasovo , in the Ryazan region, sparking a fire and taking tens of thousands of servers offline.

That facility houses two of the three supercomputers used to develop the company’s AI model, delivering a major blow to the Russian dictator, more than four years into his war with Ukraine.

The escalation comes as Russia ramps up attacks on Ukrainian data centers, part of a long-range strike campaign aimed at crippling Ukraine’s economy.

Kyiv is also r amping up its attacks on Russia’s crucial energy infrastructure , striking oil refineries which are critical to financing Moscow’s war effort.

Yandex said it could not confirm whether the equipment damaged in the strikes could be restored.

Western sanctions could make the damage harder to repair.

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said export controls and sanctions on Russia may hamper Yandex’s ability to quickly replace any advanced semiconductors damaged in the drone attacks.

“Data centers are the ‘iron heart’ of Yandex,” the company said in a statement on Friday .

“Their performance is critical for services that have become part of everyday life.” The company said millions of people depend on its services to check traffic and plan routes, listen to music, watch movies, order groceries, and find answers, while hundreds of thousands of businesses use its technology to handle orders and communicate with customers and partners.

“We continue to assess the infrastructure’s condition; it’s very difficult to predict when the data center equipment will be back online,” the statement added.

In late September, Russian forces hit a Kyiv data center run by telecom company Datagroup.

Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed the facility processed and transmitted intelligence for Ukraine’s military.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky subsequently warned that Kyiv would respond in kind.