The blaze was reported by the outlet Astra, citing its own OSINT analysis. According to the journalists, workers at the data center had themselves shown off its equipment last month and said it was located in Sasovo, in the Ryazan region.
The Telegram channels Exilenova+ and VChK-OGPU reported a strike on the Yandex DC Sasovo data-processing center, TV Rain reported. The latter said a "strong fire" broke out as a result. Exilenova+ noted that the Sasta machine-tool plant, which was also hit, is located on the grounds of the same industrial complex.
According to Exilenova+, some Yandex services experienced power-supply problems after the attack. Astra noted a message about disruptions to the "power supply of a separate availability zone of the Yandex Cloud platform." Forty minutes after the message appeared, the Yandex Cloud team reported that the situation had stabilized.
A TV Rain correspondent confirmed that some other Runet sites also became unavailable after the attack, in particular the autoposting platform Postmypost and the Ryazan region edition of the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.
Regional Governor Pavel Malkov has not yet commented on the attack, TV Rain noted.
The Sasta plant specializes in the production of CNC metalworking machines, whose equipment is used in the defense, aerospace, transport and heavy industries. In Astra's phrasing, the company's significance for the Russian defense industry lies not in producing finished weapons but in supplying the production base: the machines are needed to make high-precision metal parts and components. The enterprise is under sanctions imposed by Canada, Switzerland, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
Yandex's data center in Sasovo opened in 2011. As the head of the city administration, Yevgenia Rubtsova, told TASS in January 2022, over 11 years the company invested more than six billion rubles in it.
In late September, Russia attacked the Datagroup data center, which the Russian Defense Ministry claimed "provided processing and transmission of intelligence data in the interests of the Ukrainian Armed Forces." On the evening of September 25, the Russian Armed Forces began striking the infrastructure of the Ukrainian telecommunications operator Cosmonova, including a data center, causing internet and television disruptions in Kyiv. On October 3, Vladimir Zelensky commented on the strikes on Ukrainian data centers, saying that data centers are being hit and that this is "definitely not some kind of military infrastructure."
Sources differ: Astra, citing OSINT analysis, and Exilenova+ report a strike on the data center and a fire on the grounds of the Sasta plant, while Yandex reports an "incident" and power-supply disruptions to its cloud platform, without mentioning a strike or fire. Ryazan region Governor Pavel Malkov has not commented on the attack.