Yandex Takes a Second Data Center Hit in 48 Hours

A drone strike hit a major Yandex data center in Russia’s Kaluga region, taking several of its modules fully out of service and marking the second Yandex data center strike in 48 hours after a separate facility was damaged in Ryazan. The Kaluga complex, built in the Grabtsevo industrial park and launched in the second half of 2023, was designed to be Yandex’s largest Russian site. The attack is significant because the facility was intended to host both Yandex’s internal services and to expand Yandex Cloud, including a planned fourth availability zone.

The Kaluga site covers roughly 130,000 square meters with a planned power capacity of about 63 megawatts and space for more than 3,800 server racks rated up to 15 kilowatts each - around 50% greater capacity than some of Yandex’s other major centers. Construction began in 2022. Damage to multiple modules therefore risks degrading internal services and cloud capacity, and follows imagery showing extensive harm at the Sasovo/Ryazan data center from the earlier strike, suggesting a concentrated campaign affecting Russian cloud and internet infrastructure.