Russia’s digital economy has become the latest front in the war: Ukrainian drones have struck major data centers that underpin everything from payments and taxi apps to cloud computing and artificial-intelligence research. The damage, reports say, could take a long time to repair.¹

The sequence accelerated in October. On Oct. 8, drones hit Yandex’s Sasovo facility in Ryazan, home to two of the company’s three supercomputers; sites in Kaluga and Vladimir were hit on the following days. Ukraine then struck Sberbank’s data center and AI hub in Balakovo on Oct. 14, followed four days later by a St. Petersburg facility serving VKontakte.²

The immediate fallout reached well beyond the server rooms. Users and businesses reported interruptions to cloud services, banking, e-commerce, geolocation, ride-hailing and Yandex’s Alisa assistant; arbitration courts reportedly cancelled or postponed hearings after losing database access. Yandex restored most core cloud services by shifting workloads to other Russian centers, but the longer-term hit may be to the computing capacity needed to train AI models.²

Mikhail Klimarev, who heads the Internet Protection Society, framed the attacks as a major strategic setback: “This effectively sets Russia far behind in the AI race.”² Russia already trailed the United States and China, while sanctions and a global shortage of advanced chips complicate replacement of equipment reportedly damaged by fires.

Analysts also identify a structural problem. Ukraine has placed critical data on servers in allied European countries, limiting the impact of Russian strikes. Russia’s digital-sovereignty rules, by contrast, require domestic storage. “Because all the infrastructure and all the data is located inside Russia, it’s relatively easier to take down,” Eurasia Group analyst Nick Reiners said.²

That policy has given Moscow greater control over its internet—but, in this campaign, it has also made a tightly concentrated digital backbone a conspicuous target.