Russian tech giant Yandex has suspended operations at a key data centre in western Russia after a drone strike caused a fire at the facility, amid ongoing conflict with Ukraine.

The attack on the data centre in Sasovo, Ryazan, on 8 October affected part of the company’s infrastructure, Yandex said, adding that the data centre has been entirely shut down.

As a result some of the company’s services may be unavailable to users, it said.

Site shut down

“There are no casualties, and emergency services are on site dealing with the aftermath,” Yandex stated.

It said the scale of the damage to infrastructure was being assessed and that it could not initially confirm whether the site’s data centre equipment could be restored.

Two of Yandex’s three supercomputers, used to train its market-leading AI model, YandexGPT, are housed at the Sasovo data centre.

Yandex has not said whether the supercomputers were damaged.

Ukraine did not initially claim responsibility for the strike, but has been stepping up attacks on infrastructure, including energy-related sites and the facilities of e-commerce giant Wildberries, saying the company supplies parts to the military.