A drone strike has knocked out Yandex's largest data center, marking the first major data center takedown in Russia since the conflict with Ukraine began. The facility, Yandex DC Sasovo in Ryazan Oblast, caught fire and has ceased operations.

Ukrainian and Russian OSINT specialists Exilenova+ and ASTRA identified the site, as reported by Kyiv Independent. Yandex Cloud's status dashboard shows a power outage in its ru-central-b availability zone. Disruptions began at 1:31am local time and were still ongoing at the time of reporting.

Where is the facility located?

The data center sits within the Sasta production complex in Sasovo. The complex houses machinery and assembly workshops, R&D facilities and a foundry, and serves the Russian defence industry among other customers.

Yandex confirmed the strike caused a fire at the site and forced the data center to stop operating.

How significant is this incident?

This is the first major data center taken down inside Russia during the war. Ukrainian facilities have been struck repeatedly, including several in the past few weeks alone. Companies whose facilities have suffered drone damage include:

• Parkovyi Data Center
• MiroHost
• Datagroup
• Vodafone Ukraine
• De Novo
• Cosmonova
• Omega Telecom
• Ukrtelecom

It remains unclear whether these represent separate locations or whether some companies shared facilities.

What does it mean for Yandex's infrastructure?

Yandex operates five large data centers in Russia, located in Vladimir, Sasovo, Ivanteevka, Mytishchi and Kaluga Oblast, roughly 200 miles (322 km) south of Moscow.

The Sasovo outage is not the company's first infrastructure failure this year. In April 2025, the Moscow cloud region went down after an incident at the supporting substation.

Who owns Yandex now?

Colloquially known as "Russia's Google," Yandex was previously owned by a Netherlands-based holding company. Following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the company split its European and Russian operations, fully divesting Yandex in February 2024.

The European business now operates as Nebius, a neocloud provider.