Ukrainian drones damage Russian tax ministry data center in Gorodets

A data center serving Russia's Ministry of Finance and Federal Tax Service was damaged overnight by Ukrainian drone strikes in Gorodets, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast — a town roughly 425km (264 miles) east of Moscow and more than 900km (559 miles) from the Ukrainian border. Outlets Exilenova+ and Astra reported the strike.

The facility matters because of what it does. "The facility is one of two key data processing centers of the Federal Tax Service of Russia operating in a geo-distributed mode," ExileNova+ said. "The damage to this facility could potentially affect the operation of state information systems of the Russian Federation."

Gleb Nikitin, governor of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, confirmed three injuries after a series of drone strikes that damaged "several residential buildings, one educational facility, and one infrastructure facility." He did not name the data center directly.

What does the Gorodets site handle?

The Federal Taxation Service (FNS) oversees tax compliance across the Russian government. The Gorodets center, in development since 2012, officially opened in December 2015. It stores and processes data from state registries, including tax databases.

The Ministry of Finance also operates out of the Federal Data Processing Center in Dubna, Moscow Region, and a facility in Yerzovka, Volgograd Region.

The strike fits a wider pattern: both sides in the conflict, ongoing since 2014 and escalated by Russia's large-scale invasion in 2022, are now targeting data center infrastructure.

Which facilities have been hit on each side?

Recent weeks have seen sustained strikes on Ukrainian digital infrastructure. Russian forces have hit Kyiv-area facilities operated by:

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

Outside the capital, Russian strikes have also hit Tenet's facility in Odesa and the RX-Name data center in the Mykolaiv region of southern Ukraine.

Ukraine has struck back at Russian digital infrastructure. Targets have included several data centers owned by Yandex and Sberbank, a data center in Russian-occupied Prymorsk earlier this year, and two telecoms facilities run by Russian firms in the occupied cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.

How is Russia responding?

Russian officials have discussed mitigation options for attacks on data centers, including building "doomsday" data centers, siting facilities in disused coal mines, or relocating them to friendly neighboring territories.

The pressure extends beyond the battlefield. Several Starlink ground station sites across Europe — in Poland, Bulgaria, and Lithuania — have been targets of arson attacks in recent weeks, with officials linking the incidents to Russia. Elon Musk has separately been accused of reducing Starlink's available satellite communications capacity in Ukraine.

The Gorodets strike places a core tax-data hub more than 900km from the front line within drone reach.