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


Smoke billows from Yandex's Sasovo hub, one of the company's five large data centres, after a fire following a drone strike forced the suspension of operations at the site, which hosts tens of thousands of servers, Sasovo, Russia, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video on October 8, 2026. SOCIAL MEDIA/via REUTERS

MOSCOW, Oct 8 (Reuters) - ⁠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.

(Reporting by ​Gleb Stolyarov. Editing by Mark Trevelyan, Ron Popeski and Mark Potter)

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