Ukrainian strikes disrupt Russian data centers, services

Ukrainian drone strikes damaged data centers serving Yandex, Sberbank and VKontakte, disrupting cloud services and everyday services including banking, e-commerce, ride-hailing and geolocation across Russia. The outages reportedly also affected AI tools and access to court databases, leading some arbitration hearings to be postponed. Because the strikes hit facilities housing critical computing infrastructure, including two of Yandex’s supercomputers, experts warn the damage could hinder Russia’s AI ambitions. Replacing specialized equipment amid sanctions and supply shortages could make repairs take months or longer, though the companies have not disclosed the full extent of the damage.