The ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, now stretching into its third year following Moscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion, has seen a sharp escalation of cross-border attacks on critical infrastructure this week, with Ukrainian drone strikes targeting a major Russian tech firm for the third time in five days.
The latest attack damaged a Yandex data center located in Vladimir, a city roughly 120 miles east of Moscow, forcing the Russian technology giant—widely nicknamed “Russia’s Google” for its dominant position in the country’s search and digital services market—to completely suspend operations at the facility. In an official statement posted to Telegram, Yandex confirmed that no personnel were injured in the strike, but disruptions have spread across multiple consumer and enterprise services offered by the company. Yandex teams have launched emergency recovery work to restore full connectivity for users.
This attack marks the third strike against Yandex infrastructure in a single week. The first two targeted facilities in Sasovo on Thursday and Kaluga, a city southwest of Moscow, on Friday. Those earlier strikes already caused widespread outages for Yandex offerings, including the company’s generative AI chatbot and smart home ecosystem. Beyond its core search business, Yandex operates widely used ride-hailing and food delivery platforms that serve tens of millions of Russian users daily. The company noted last week that its network of data centers is the backbone of all its digital services, adding that full restoration timelines remain “very difficult to predict” amid repeated attacks.
Ukrainian officials have openly acknowledged the strategy of targeting Russian infrastructure: Kyiv says these strikes are intended to disrupt revenue streams that fund Moscow’s war effort and force Russian military and logistics teams to divert critical resources away from frontline combat to repair damaged civilian and commercial facilities.
The latest strike comes amid rising international diplomatic friction over Ukraine’s targeting of Russian energy infrastructure. Just hours before Sunday’s initial Yandex attack, former U.S. President Donald Trump publicly urged Ukraine to “damn well stop” attacking Russian oil refineries, arguing that allowing Moscow to increase diesel exports to global markets would ease energy prices. The comment sparked sharp criticism from European leaders and a public disagreement with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, creating a rift just as U.S. congressional debate over additional military aid to Ukraine remains stalled.
The escalation of infrastructure attacks is not one-sided. While Ukraine targets facilities inside Russia, Russian forces have continued their own barrage of strikes across Ukrainian territory through the weekend. Ukraine’s State Emergency Service reported that overnight attacks on four districts in the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region left six people injured. Just one day earlier, Russian strikes on the southern city of Zaporizhzhia killed at least 20 people, including four children, according to local Ukrainian officials.
Targeting digital infrastructure has become a recurring tactic for both sides in the conflict. Russia has previously launched repeated strikes against Ukrainian data centers, causing widespread national internet outages and forcing many Ukrainian technology companies to relocate their server hardware abroad to avoid total disruption of services.