Sasovo
Town in eastern Ryazan Oblast, Russia, home to a Yandex data centre and supercomputers.
Ukrainian drones knocked out a Yandex data centre at Sasovo on 8 October 2026, putting out of action the site that holds two of the company's three AI-training supercomputers.
Last refreshed: 12 October 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Why did Ukraine's drones target a Yandex data centre at Sasovo?
Timeline for Sasovo
Hosted the struck Yandex data centre
Russia-Ukraine War 2026: Ukraine strikes Yandex AI data centresBackground
Sasovo is a town of about 20,000 people on the Tsna River in eastern Ryazan Oblast, some 180 km from the city of Ryazan. It hosts a Yandex data centre holding two of the company's three supercomputers for training AI models.
That data centre made the small town a military target. Ukrainian drones knocked it out on 8 October 2026, in strikes Kyiv presented as reciprocity for Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centres.
The attack marked a widening of Ukraine's long-range targets from oil and military plants to computing infrastructure that Russian civilians and companies use daily. Sasovo's role in Yandex's AI training means damage there reaches beyond the town to one of Russia's main technology companies.
Drones knocked out Sasovo's data centre
Sasovo moved onto Ukraine's target map on 8 October 2026, when drones knocked out the Yandex data centre in the town. Two of the company's three AI-training supercomputers sit there, so the strike reached Yandex's model development rather than a single consumer service.
Zelenskyy described the attacks on Yandex as "our symmetrical response" to Russian strikes on Ukrainian data centres. The next day the company reported a second site, at Kaluga, partly out of action. Sasovo was the first of the two to be hit, opening a run of strikes aimed at computing rather than fuel. For a town of about 20,000, a single data centre was enough to make it a target.
What happened at Sasovo in October 2026?
Where is Sasovo?
Why does the Sasovo data centre matter to Yandex?
