Nine people were injured, five of them hospitalized, when drones hit infrastructure in Kaluga, regional governor Vladislav Shapsha said. The attack took place overnight into October 9.
Yandex later said its data center in the city was hit. Employees were not hurt, but several modules of the data center were completely disabled, the company said, warning that some services could operate intermittently.
The strike followed an overnight attack on October 8 on a data center in the town of Sasovo in the Ryazan region. A fire broke out there and the facility was fully shut down.
After the attacks, users began reporting disruptions to Yandex services as well as to news sites and various platforms, including Avito, Ivi, MegaFon, Russian Railways and T-Bank.
Yandex said its data centers are the company's "iron heart" and that their operation is critical for services that have become part of people's daily lives. The company said its teams are working day and night to keep services running.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky briefly commented on the attack on Yandex on the evening of October 8. He said Russian troops strike Ukrainian data centers, and Ukraine responded. He did not disclose details.
According to Meduza, Russia has regularly struck data centers in Ukraine in recent weeks. Since late September, Russian troops have damaged or destroyed data processing centers belonging to at least eight companies. Russia's Defense Ministry has called such strikes a "forced digital detox."
Meanwhile, talks on ending the war are getting under way in the United States. Ukrainian representatives will meet in Miami on October 9 and 10 with U.S. negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. The Ukrainian delegation includes Kyrylo Budanov, head of the presidential office; David Arakhamia, head of the Servant of the People faction; and Rustem Umerov, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service.
Reuters reported that Washington invited national security advisers from Britain, France and Germany, as well as representatives of NATO and the European Union, to the talks. Kushner and Witkoff, according to Axios, plan to present the Ukrainian side with new ideas and proposals for ending the war. The specific proposals were not disclosed.
Shortly before the talks, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there are currently no prospects for a peaceful settlement. He noted that the war has reached a situation of "strategic deadlock": Russia continues to insist on full control over the Donbas, a condition unacceptable to Ukraine.
Zelensky responded that breaking the deadlock requires increasing economic pressure on Russia and allowing Ukraine to use Starlink for strikes on Russian territory.
Sources differ: according to Meduza, Yandex data centers in Kaluga and Sasovo were attacked, while Current Time reports damage to a data center in Kaluga and does not mention Sasovo. The outlet Verstka reports that a plant producing rocket fuel components caught fire in the Tver region after a drone strike, an episode other sources do not mention.