Nearly 500 drones headed toward Moscow overnight, disrupting operations at four airports, while a reported Ukrainian drone attack killed one person in Balakovo and an oil terminal fire continued in Rostov-on-Don.
According to Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, 493 drones headed toward the Russian capital from the evening of Oct. 13 into the morning of Oct. 14. He said 180 were destroyed as they approached the city.
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Moscow’s Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo, Vnukovo, and Zhukovsky airports suspended operations amid the drone threat. Vnukovo remained closed for more than eight hours, and passengers were reportedly asked to leave their aircraft.
The Russian Defense Ministry said 902 Ukrainian drones were shot down over Russian regions overnight.
One killed, residential buildings damaged in Balakovo
One person was killed and several residential buildings were damaged in Balakovo, Saratov region, following an overnight drone attack, regional Governor Roman Busargin reported.
On Oct. 14, Russia’s Defense Ministry warned of a Ukrainian drone attack on the city. Busargin later said the attack had damaged several residential buildings and caused one death.
According to an OSINT analysis by the Russian outlet Astra, one of the damaged buildings is located at 9 Titova Street, approximately three kilometers from the Balakovo combined heat and power plant (CHPP-4), a major source of heat for the city.
Astra identified the building’s location using footage published by eyewitnesses.
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Meanwhile, the Ukrainian OSINT Telegram channel Exilenova+ reported that local residents had heard dozens of explosions overnight. Footage shared by the channel shows an apparent impact followed by a fire.
Exilenova+ also reported fires in the Balakovo industrial zone, citing data from NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS).
The area includes a Sberbank data center and a metallurgical plant, although the specific sites affected have not been independently confirmed.
One possible target identified by monitoring channels was Sberbank’s large data center complex in Balakovo. Construction of the facility is ongoing, with sections being commissioned in stages, meaning parts of the complex may already be operational.
The project, valued at 122.2 billion rubles (more than $1 billion), is intended to become one of Russia’s largest data centers. It is designed to accommodate around 3,000 server racks and up to 120,000 servers, with a planned power capacity of 82 megawatts. The facility was also expected to host services for the Russian government’s GosTech digital platform.
Shortly before 7 a.m., Exilenova+ published footage it described as evidence of an attack on the data center.
“There is confirmation of the attack on the Sberbank mega-data center in the Saratov region. We are showing you exclusive footage from Balakovo,” the channel wrote.
Exilenova+ also reported a possible strike on the industrial zone of the Balakovo Metallurgical Plant, known as MZ Balakovo, in a post published at 7:13 a.m.
The plant specializes in steel and rolled metal products, including reinforcing bars and merchant bars. It has its own steelmaking facilities and produces more than 1 million tons of rolled steel annually.
Russian authorities have not publicly confirmed damage to either the data center or the metallurgical plant, and Ukraine has not commented on the reported attack.
Russian data centers reportedly targeted in recent attacks
The reported incident in Balakovo follows other drone attacks that have allegedly disrupted Russian data center operations.
On Oct. 11, drones reportedly forced a Yandex data center in the Vladimir region to suspend operations, taking dozens of the company’s services offline across Russia. Yandex acknowledged that the facility had been disabled.
On Oct. 8, another attack struck Yandex’s largest data center in the Ryazan region, reportedly triggering a major fire. The same day, the company removed the locations of its data centers in four Russian regions from online maps.
Fire continues at Rostov-on-Don oil terminal
Separately, Astra reported that a fire at the NZNP oil terminal in Rostov-on-Don had continued for four days following an attack early on Oct. 10.
The terminal belongs to the Novoshakhtinsk Petroleum Products Plant and was formerly known as Yug Rusi.
According to Astra’s analysis of eyewitness footage, at least eight of the facility’s 12 storage tanks had been damaged by Oct. 14. An earlier analysis of footage recorded before the latest update indicated that seven tanks had been damaged.
Astra reported on Oct. 12 that the fire was still burning, although no open flames were visible in the footage at that time. New footage published early on Oct. 14 indicated that the fire was continuing.
The terminal handles the transfer of petroleum products for export, generating revenue for Russia, and supplies fuel to the Russian military, according to the report. Its annual handling capacity is estimated at 2.5 million to 3.5 million tons of petroleum products.