Russia's Yandex says it is unclear whether data centre can be restored after drone strike

Russian technology ​and AI company Yandex said ‌on Thursday ​it could not yet determine whether equipment at a data centre hit by a Ukrainian ‌drone attack could be restored.

Yandex said earlier that the attack on its Sasovo hub, one of its five large data centres, caused a fire ‌and forced it to suspend operations at the site, which hosts ‌tens of thousands of servers. "The scale of the damage to the infrastructure is still being assessed," Yandex said in a statement. "For the moment, we cannot confirm whether it is ⁠possible ​to restore ⁠the data centre equipment in Sasovo."

The company earlier said some of its services were unavailable ⁠and specialist teams were at the site assessing the damage. Two of Yandex's three ​supercomputers, used to develop its AI model, are housed at the ⁠Sasovo data centre. Yandex has not said whether they were damaged.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, ⁠speaking ​to reporters in Kyiv, did not refer specifically to the strike on Yandex, but said Ukraine was "mirroring" Russian attacks on data centres. "We always ⁠respond in mirror-like fashion," Zelenskiy said. "You all know, they have been ⁠hitting and ⁠continue to hit our data centres. We are responding. I can't share all the details."