11 October 2026

Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian data centers may have knocked out all three supercomputers operated by Yandex.

The country has three others operated by different organizations.

The Russian opposition publication T-invariant reported this.

The first attack occurred overnight on October 8, targeting the Yandex Sasta data center, which has operated in the town of Sasovo in Russia’s Ryazan Region since 2014. Sasovo houses the Chervonenkis supercomputer, with a peak performance of 29.42 petaflops, and the Lyapunov supercomputer, rated at 20.03 petaflops.

Chervonenkis is the company’s most powerful supercomputer and the most powerful supercomputer built in Russia over the past 15 years. When it launched in 2021, it ranked 19th in the global TOP500 list. It has since fallen to the second hundred because sanctions have made it difficult to upgrade its infrastructure.

Yandex supercomputer Lyapunov. Photo credits: Yandex press service

The second attack took place on October 9, targeting Yandex’s data center in Kaluga, which has operated in the Grabtsevo industrial park since 2022. The company describes it as its largest data center and one of the largest in Russia overall. The third attack occurred on October 11, targeting a data center in Vladimir that houses the company’s third supercomputer, Galushkin, with peak performance of 20.64 petaflops.

According to the media, all three Yandex supercomputers have gone offline. Experts interviewed by the publication believe the attacks have already inflicted enormous damage on Russia’s IT infrastructure.

“Yandex built its data centers and supercomputers in peacetime and for peacetime. All development was geared toward normal civilian life; no one even imagined that drones would hit the roofs. Earthquakes and other natural disasters are not expected in the Ryazan and Vladimir regions, so no one thought about investing in the physical protection of buildings,” one supercomputing expert told the publication.

All three Yandex supercomputers were used primarily to train neural networks. The company designed them specifically for machine-learning tasks. All three systems are built around AMD EPYC processors and NVIDIA A100 graphics accelerators connected by a high-speed InfiniBand network.

“It will not be possible to restore supercomputers of this level. And the issue is not even whether the money is available. The main problem is not even sanctions, but shortages of chips and other components: there is a huge global queue for them. However, the costs of gray-market and black-market imports are also very high,” a supercomputing specialist interviewed by the publication noted.

According to the publication, of Russia’s six largest supercomputers, only Sberbank’s Christofari and Christofari Neo are located in a place relatively protected from drone attacks: Skolkovo, near Moscow, which is covered by air defense systems.

Damage following the strike on the Yandex data center in Sasovo, Ryazan region. October 8, 2026. Source: Absolutely Reliable Source/Planet Labs

The GROM supercomputer operated by Russian telecommunications company MTS is located in Lytkarino, near Moscow. The remaining Yandex data centers are also in the Moscow Region, in Mytishchi and Ivanteyevka.

According to The Moscow Times, disruptions following the attacks affected users of Yandex and other services hosted on its cloud platform not only in Russia but also abroad. In response, Yandex added a section to its user agreement exempting the company from liability in cases of force majeure, including drone attacks.

Drone Strikes May Have Knocked Out All Three Yandex Supercomputers