Russia was not ready for the data center war it started with Ukraine
Summary
Russia attacked Ukrainian data centers and communication networks, but was not prepared for Ukraine’s counterattacks. Ukraine has damaged several major Russian data centers owned by Yandex, causing outages in many Russian digital services. This shows vulnerabilities in Russia’s highly centralized digital economy.Key Facts
- Russia started attacking Ukrainian data centers and phone networks in late September 2024.
- Ukraine responded by striking three large Yandex data centers near Moscow with drones in October 2024.
- Yandex is a major Russian tech company, controlling about 70% of Russia’s search engine market and providing many digital services.
- The damaged Yandex data centers house powerful supercomputers used for AI development.
- These strikes caused outages in Russian apps for payments, banking, e-commerce, video streaming, ride-hailing, food delivery, and maps.
- Russian commentators have warned that Russia’s centralized digital system could collapse due to its vulnerability in this “data center war.”
- Ukraine’s decentralized digital system may be more resilient to such attacks.
- Yandex’s cloud services are used by large Russian companies including grocery stores and retailers, so outages have a broad impact.
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