Ukraine steps up strikes on Russia’s tech infrastructure, damaging third data center in 4 days

Ukraine has intensified its attacks on Russia's technological infrastructure, bringing down a third data center operated by Yandex within a four-day period. This campaign is part of Kyiv's strategy to target critical infrastructure deep within Russia.

The most recent target was a data center in Vladimir, located east of Moscow. This attack caused widespread outages across Yandex's services, disrupting services such as taxi bookings and banking operations for users in numerous Russian cities, as well as in Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Armenia.

Previously, Yandex data centers were targeted in the Ryazan and Kaluga regions, all of which were situated southeast and southwest of Moscow, respectively. The company's services, often described as Russia's Google, encompass a search engine and a vast array of digital services. Yandex plays a significant role in Russia's artificial intelligence development.

This escalation in attacks follows Russian strikes on data centers in Ukraine. Ukrainian drones have also targeted Russian infrastructure, highlighting the ongoing aerial conflict between the two nations, even as their armies remain largely inconclusive on the ground. The conflict has been ongoing for over four and a half years since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.