Drone Campaign Knocks Out Third Yandex Facility
A Ukrainian drone strike has crippled a critical data center belonging to Yandex, the Russian internet giant, marking the third such attack in less than a week. The latest strike, which targeted a facility in Vladimir, east of Moscow, has forced the company to suspend operations at the site and left users scrambling as services sputtered.
Yandex, often described as “Russia’s Google,” confirmed the damage via a Telegram post. While the company stated that no one was injured in the blast, the disruption was immediate. With this latest hit, three of Yandex’s five major data centers have now been knocked offline or damaged since Thursday.
A Week of Targeted Tech Strikes
The campaign against Russia’s digital infrastructure began on Thursday when a drone struck a Yandex facility in Sasovo. The next day, another hit a site in Kaluga, southwest of the capital. Sunday’s strike in Vladimir completed a triple blow that has severely tested the tech giant’s resilience.
Yandex is not just a search engine. It is a cornerstone of daily Russian life. The firm runs the country’s dominant taxi-hailing and food-delivery networks, alongside smart home systems and an AI chatbot. After the first two strikes, Yandex warned that keeping its platforms running was becoming increasingly difficult. The company admitted it remains hard to say when everything will be back to normal.
Kyiv has made no secret of its strategy. Ukrainian officials say targeting these facilities cuts off vital economic pipelines that feed Moscow’s war effort. By hitting high-tech assets, Ukraine also hopes to force the Kremlin to pull resources away from the front lines to defend and rebuild domestic infrastructure.
Geopolitics and Pressure on Kyiv
The latest strike occurred just as international pressure on Ukraine’s targeting strategy intensifies. US President Donald Trump recently issued a sharp warning, telling Kyiv to halt its drone strikes on Russian oil refineries. Trump argued that the attacks are choking global fuel supplies, particularly diesel, and suggested a deal to stabilize energy markets. The proposal has caused anger in Kyiv, sparking a public dispute between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Despite the diplomatic friction, Ukraine appears determined to keep up the pressure on Russian soil. The war, now in its fifth year, has increasingly evolved into a battle of attrition fought with long-range drones targeting deep inside both nations’ borders.
The Heavy Toll of Ongoing Retaliation
While Ukraine targets Russian tech and energy nodes, Russian forces continue to pound Ukrainian cities. Over the weekend, Moscow launched another wave of heavy aerial attacks.
In the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, local emergency services reported that overnight Russian strikes wounded six people across four districts. This followed a devastating series of strikes on Saturday in Zaporizhzhia. Local officials confirmed that at least 20 people, including four children, lost their lives in those attacks.
This digital-physical crossfire is not one-sided. Long before Ukraine began targeting Yandex, Russia repeatedly struck Ukrainian data centers. Those attacks caused widespread internet blackouts and forced numerous Ukrainian companies to migrate their servers to safer locations abroad. Now, the digital battlefield has officially crossed back over the Russian border, leaving millions of Russian citizens feeling the direct effects of a war that is no longer far away.