Ukraine hit Russian tech company Yandex's data centres three times in four days: some services are down, no injuries reported

Headlines say Ukraine is attacking 'Russia's Google'. Here is what actually happened.

What is confirmed

Ukrainian drones have hit data centres of the Russian tech company Yandex three times since Thursday: in Sasovo on Thursday, in the Kaluga region southwest of Moscow on Friday, and in Vladimir, east of Moscow, on Sunday. Yandex says the Vladimir centre was damaged and has been fully shut down, and that it is working to restore service. No one was hurt.

What it means for users

Yandex runs Russia's most popular search engine, a taxi app, food delivery, an AI chatbot and smart home devices. After the strikes, some of these services stopped working or worked poorly. People in several Russian regions and abroad reported problems. Yandex said earlier that it is hard to predict when services will be fully back. So these are real outages, but not a total shutdown of the company.

Why Ukraine is doing this

Kyiv says it is targeting places that bring money to Russia's war effort, and that repairs will force Russia to spend resources. The latest strike came hours after President Trump told Ukraine to stop hitting Russian oil refineries.

This is not one-sided

Russia began striking data centres in Ukraine weeks ago, causing internet outages and pushing some Ukrainian firms to move their servers abroad. On Sunday, Moscow said it hit a facility in Odesa.

Why concern is fair

Both sides have stepped up attacks on infrastructure in recent months. And the war is still costing lives: officials say at least 20 people, including four children, were killed in Russian attacks on Zaporizhzhia on Saturday.

Bottom line

The strikes are real and have caused service problems, but no injuries have been reported. They are part of a wider exchange of attacks on infrastructure, not a new kind of war.

Sources: tagesschau.de, BBC