Why Russia's war on Ukraine's data centers could backfire on Moscow

Russian strikes on Ukrainian data centers could backfire, experts have told the Kyiv Independent, as Kyiv's retaliatory attacks have exposed vulnerabilities in how Moscow has organized IT infrastructure.

On Sept. 23, a Russian attack damaged a Kyiv data center housing network equipment for internet provider UTELS, causing service disruptions. The attack also affected cloud service Fex.net and disrupted internet access for around 100,000 households in Kyiv. Since then, Russia has increasingly targeted Ukraine's digital infrastructure.

Moscow is expanding its targets to find new ways to pressure Ukraine as its battlefield offensives in 2026 have failed to achieve their objectives, Tetiana Trach, a Russia researcher at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), told the Kyiv Independent. The strikes on data centers fit into Russia's broader campaign to damage Ukraine's economy and make civilian life harder.

Ukraine, which has increasingly used long-range strikes to weaken Russia's ability to sustain the war, retaliated. Between Oct. 8 and Oct. 18, Ukrainian drones struck three Yandex data centers, a Sberbank facility under construction, and a data center belonging to social media giant VK.

But while Ukraine suffers from daily Russian drone and missile barrages, Russia faces a different problem. Serhiy Petrenko, former Yandex Ukraine head, estimated that around 80% of Russia's data centers are concentrated in Moscow and the surrounding region — within reach of Ukrainian long-range drones.

Russia's centralized digital infrastructure leaves Moscow facing two challenges: inflicting comparable damage on Ukraine and protecting its own data centers from further strikes. Experts say neither will be easy.

"Russian data centers appear more vulnerable than Ukrainian ones. Russia appears willing to accept this risk," Trach said.

The Russian pro-war milblogger 'Art Jockey' said that attacks on data centers had previously been treated as an informal red line between the two countries, and that Moscow's decision to target Ukrainian facilities had opened the door to retaliation.

"With no end in sight to the war he started nearly five years ago, Putin opted for another round of escalation," they wrote. "It's not that no one had thought of attacking data centers before. Putin simply decided to make the first move now, effectively removing the restraints on Ukraine as well."

Can Russia knock Ukraine offline?

Russia's war against Ukraine in 2026 can be seen as a contest between two strategies of long-range attacks, with both sides seeking to increase pressure beyond the battlefield, a July analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) concluded. The recent strikes on data centers fit that pattern.

Following a meeting with military leaders on Sept. 25, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the Ukrainian government had decided to strengthen the protection of data centers and other critical communications infrastructure.

Despite the recent damage, knocking out internet access across Ukraine would be extremely difficult, Anatolii Frolenkov, a representative of the 1-IX internet exchange point, told the Kyiv Independent in September.

"Russian strikes would have to be continuous and happen at a hundred different sites to be effective."

"The internet will not disappear completely," Frolenkov said. "There will be outages, there will be problems. It won't work as smoothly or as quickly, things may glitch, and operators may go down for a couple of hours because the infrastructure is being physically destroyed."

Samuel Bendett, an expert on Russian military technology at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), told the Kyiv Independent that "Russian strikes would have to be continuous and happen at a hundred different sites to be effective."

Trach agreed that Russia could continue causing temporary internet outages in Ukraine but said a nationwide shutdown was unlikely given the country's decentralized infrastructure.

Ukraine strikes back

On Oct. 8, outages occurred in many segments of the Russian internet at about 4 p.m. local time, especially in Moscow and St. Petersburg, after Ukraine struck a Yandex data center, the Moscow Times said. Several banking services, Google, RuTube, the website of the Russian Railways, and many retail websites were unreachable.

"We certainly are capable," Zelensky commented on the attack. "We always respond in kind."

Subsequent Ukrainian strikes on Yandex data centers in October disrupted payments, banking, and online services in Russia, while parts of the infrastructure were still recovering more than a week later.

"This is the first serious problem with potentially major consequences for Russia's financial system, and the campaign against data centers has only been going on for a few days," the milblogger Art Jockey said on Oct. 12.

He warned that if Ukraine disabled the main services of Sberbank, Russia's largest lender, it could trigger panic among depositors and mass withdrawals.

Two days later, Ukrainian drones struck a Sberbank data center under construction in Balakovo. The bank confirmed the attack but said its services were operating normally.

"You didn't think it would end with Yandex, did you?" Ukrainian drone manufacturer Fire Point said the same day on social media platform Threads.

On Oct. 18, VK confirmed an attack on its data center in Leningrad Oblast but said its services remained operational. Users, however, reported disruptions across the social network and its affiliated platforms, according to Downdetector, a service that tracks online outages.

Consequences for Russia

The consequences of Ukraine's strikes on Russian data centers could extend far beyond disrupted banking and online services, potentially setting back the country's AI development and affecting military technology.

"The Russians, I think, didn't think it would get that far, that fast."

"Yandex and other data centers that were hit are going to set Russian AI development back significantly," Bendett said.

Yandex and Sberbank are both major players in Russia's AI development, while the state plays a central role in the sector. Russia also recently announced plans to share drone attack data with developers to train neural networks and algorithms, according to Bendett.

While Russia's military AI programs have traditionally operated separately from commercial developers, they still depend on some of the same computing resources, advanced chips, and civilian specialists. Western sanctions also complicate replacing damaged equipment.

"The dependence could be quite substantial. And if civilian specialists are raising the alarm about these attacks, then Russian military AI could be impacted," Bendett added.

Can Russia protect itself?

"Is there any hope for air defenses?" a Art Jockey asked, answering his own question with "there isn't much hope."

"Sooner or later, if Ukraine decides to strike this facility, its drones will get through — if not on the first attempt, then on the second or third," he said.

On Oct. 12, Russian Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadayev said his ministry was discussing data center protection with the Defense Ministry, according to Russian news agency Interfax.

Two days later, President Vladimir Putin convened senior officials for a cybersecurity meeting, although the Kremlin denied any connection to Ukrainian drone strikes.

Besides government ministers and top security officials, the meeting included Sberbank chief executive Herman Gref and central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina, according to Reuters.

On Oct. 16, Kemerovo Oblast governor Ilya Seredyuk proposed housing data centers inside depleted open-pit mines and quarries, given their natural protection from aerial bombardment.

"The Russians, I think, didn't think it would get that far, that fast," Bendett said.

"Now they're scrambling for solutions, like putting data centers underground or farther away. But what's done is done."