Ukraine strikes Russian data centers in retaliation for attacks

Summarised from 2 outlets · Updated 14 Oct, 09:38 · Archive

Ukraine has targeted Yandex data centers in response to Russian drone strikes on Ukrainian digital infrastructure.

Ukraine has conducted drone strikes against three data centers owned by Yandex, Russia's largest technology company, in what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described as a 'symmetrical response' to Russian attacks. The strikes came after Russia launched a campaign targeting Ukrainian data centers and mobile networks in late September, temporarily disrupting internet and cellular service for up to 100,000 households in Kyiv.

One Ukrainian attack damaged a Yandex facility in the Sasovo region southeast of Moscow on October 8, damaging infrastructure housing two of Yandex's three supercomputers used to train its YandexGPT AI model. The Chervonenkis supercomputer is rated at 29.42 petaflops and ranks 101st globally, while the Lyapunov supercomputer is rated at 20.03 petaflops and ranks 161st.

Pro-Kremlin bloggers have warned that Russia's hyper-centralized digital economy, with services concentrated under a single company, makes it vulnerable to such strikes. They suggested that Ukraine's more decentralized digital services infrastructure could prove more resilient if the two countries continue targeting each other's data centers.

How it is being reported

• How Ukraine’s data centre strikes threw Russia into turmoilKyiv’s attacks exposed vulnerabilities of Kremlin effort to centralise internet services under one companyFinancial Times · 14 Oct, 05:00
• Russia was not ready for the data center war it started with UkraineRussian bloggers warn Russia’s hyper-centralized digital economy is vulnerable.Ars Technica · 12 Oct, 18:52

In this story: Russia · Ukraine · Yandex · Volodymyr Zelenskyy · Kyiv · Moscow

This summary was written by AI from the headlines and standfirsts above, and states as fact only what at least two outlets report. How we use AI · Report a problem