Ukrainian Drones Strike Russia's AI and Cloud Infrastructure
Ukrainian drone strikes targeted Yandex data centers across Russia, causing widespread disruptions to cloud and artificial intelligence services.
Drone attacks organized by Ukrainian forces targeted Russia's critical artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure, causing a major disruption and rendering many digital services unusable.
Wave of Attacks Targeting Yandex Data Centers
Yandex, which has become a primary target in Ukraine's recent attacks, suffered a devastating blow resulting in the complete shutdown of its facility in the Vladimir region. According to Reuters, this third major attack that took place on Sunday morning put the facility out of commission.
Critical Facilities and AI Supercomputers Under Attack
In addition to the center in the Vladimir region, another data center located in Kaluga and the Sasovo facilities near Moscow were also targeted. It was reported that Sasovo houses two of the three supercomputers the company uses to develop its artificial intelligence model.
Various Digital Services and Voice Assistant Offline
According to reports by the Kyiv Post, many important services within Russia and globally were disabled as a result of the attacks. Notably, Yandex's smart assistant Alice became inoperable, while Yandex Music and the video conferencing service Telemost were also affected.
Cloud Infrastructure Outages Hit Industries
Because Yandex data centers provide critical cloud infrastructure, the disruptions spread over a wide area. Yandex Compute Cloud experienced widespread outages, while dedicated cloud solutions for healthcare and government data storage were also affected.
Widespread Consumer and Market Chaos
Infrastructure issues also caused chaos among consumers; banking applications, ridesharing services, and mobile apps of major retail companies such as Magnit and Fix Price faced severe disruptions.