Ukraine Strikes Russian Data Centers, Disrupting Services and AI Research

Ukrainian drone attacks have targeted and damaged several major data centers in Russia, disrupting essential online services, including banking, e-commerce, and ride-hailing, and potentially setting back the country's artificial intelligence development.

In recent weeks, Ukraine has struck three key data centers belonging to the tech giant Yandex, one operated by Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, and another for the social media platform VKontakte. While the companies have not detailed the extent of the damage, users and businesses across Russia have reported widespread interruptions to cloud services.

AI-driven services, such as Yandex's virtual assistant Alisa and multimodal AI chatbots, have also experienced lasting disruptions. The impact has even extended to Russia's judicial system, reportedly leading to the cancellation or postponement of court sessions due to database access issues.

Experts predict that repairing the damage could take months, if not years, with some warning that these attacks could significantly impede Moscow's aspirations to become a leader in AI development.

"This effectively sets Russia far behind in the AI race," said Mikhail Klimarev, head of the Internet Protection Society activist group.

These data center strikes are part of a broader campaign of aerial attacks by both Russia and Ukraine against each other's vital infrastructure. Russian missiles and drones have targeted Ukraine's power grid and other critical sites, while Ukraine has retaliated with drone attacks on Russian oil refineries and warehouses of major online retailers.

The attacks on Russian data centers closely followed similar strikes by Moscow on Ukrainian data centers that disrupted internet and television broadcasts.

Specifically, a Yandex data center in the Ryazan region was hit on Oct. 8, followed by a Kaluga data center a day later and one in Vladimir on Oct. 11. The Sberbank data center in the Saratov region was targeted on Oct. 14, and a VKontakte data center in St. Petersburg was struck on Oct. 18.

Data centers, described as massive buildings with servers and supporting infrastructure, are considered relatively soft targets. Damage can be inflicted by drones carrying modest explosive payloads. The vulnerability of such facilities was previously demonstrated by Iranian drone strikes on Amazon Web Services data centers in the UAE and Bahrain.

Russia's domestic digital sovereignty policy requires all data to be stored within the country, making its data infrastructure particularly susceptible to such attacks. "Because all the infrastructure and all the data is located inside Russia, it’s relatively easier to take down," said Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at Eurasia Group.

Many experts believe these attacks could prompt Russian companies to move data abroad and potentially lead authorities to ease some internet control measures to mitigate the damage.

Yandex, which plays a central role in Russia's digital landscape, offers services ranging from search engines and cloud storage to payment apps, ride-hailing, and e-commerce. The disruptions at Yandex affected critical functions like payments, online orders, and taxi services.

While Yandex has worked to restore services by utilizing other data centers within Russia, the damage to its AI development capabilities is expected to be substantial and long-lasting. The company's supercomputers, ranked among the world's top 500, were housed in some of the hit data centers. Global chip shortages and sanctions on technology exports to Russia are likely to complicate repair efforts and replacements of high-end components like U.S.-designed Nvidia A100 chips.

"I’m not sure it can be done in half a year, a year, or even at all," Klimarev stated regarding the potential for repairs.