Drones hit Yandex data centre in first major attack on Russian data hub

Drones ​hit a major ‌data centre in ​Russia's Ryazan region owned by the country's leading ‌AI and technology company Yandex, the company said on Thursday.

It added that the attack caused a fire and ‌forced the company to fully suspend the centre's ‌operations. The company said it was dealing with the consequences and restoring affected services. The company said that its core consumer ⁠services ​were not affected. ⁠Yandex runs YandexGPT, one of Russia's leading generative AI models.

The ⁠attack on the Yandex data centre followed a ​wave of Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centres ⁠in recent weeks. Previously there were no confirmed major Ukrainian ⁠drone ​attacks on Russian data centres. On the website of its Yandex Cloud service, the company ⁠said there were problems with the electricity supply at one ⁠data centre "zone", ⁠and recommended customers use other zones.