2 Strikes in 48 HOURS... Ukraine Is Wiping Out Russia's 'Google' Data Centers

In just 48 hours, Ukrainian drones struck two of the five data centers that run Yandex, the tech giant Russians call their Google. The first strike, on 8 October 2026, hit Sasovo in the Ryazan region, where Yandex confirmed a fire and a full shutdown of the site that holds its most powerful supercomputer, Chervonenkis. One night later a second data center near Kaluga was hit, and Russian state media reported several modules completely out of operation. Yandex Cloud failed, outage reports passed 1,300, and websites for Russian Railways and regional governments went down. President Zelensky called it a symmetrical response, because since 23 September Russia has been bombing data centers in Kyiv, cutting internet for around 100,000 households. In this briefing we explain what Yandex is, why a data center is such a soft target, why Russia's data-localisation laws turned its sovereign internet into a sovereign target, how cheap FP-1 drones reached these sites, and what it means for Russia's air defences and its AI ambitions. We also lay out honestly what is still unknown: two of five sites were hit, the real damage is unclear, and Ukraine's military has given no official account. Sources include Reuters, TASS, Meduza, The Moscow Times, NetBlocks and Tom's Hardware. Subscribe to War Map Decoded for the next briefing.