On the night of October 8, the Ukrainian Armed Forces struck Yandex’s data center in the city of Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast, and the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat oil refinery in Bashkortostan, Ukrainian monitoring channels Exilenova+, VCHK-OGPU, and Astra reported. Yandex called the incident an “incident” and reported the temporary unavailability of several services.
According to Exilenova+, VCHK-OGPU, and Astra, a strong fire broke out on the territory of the Sasta plant in Sasovo after the strike on Yandex’s data center. Users complained about problems with Yandex.Disk and Yandex.Documents, and the company promised to provide updates on the restoration process.
Yandex’s data center in Sasovo opened in 2011. The head of the city administration, Yevgenia Rubtsova, said in 2022 that the company had invested more than 6 billion rubles in it over 11 years. The facility is located on the territory of the Sasta plant, which manufactures metalworking machines and supplies equipment, including to defense industry enterprises.
For another facility — the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat oil refinery in Bashkortostan — the Ukrainian channel Exilenova+ reported a strike. Based on photos and video footage from witnesses, Astra established that a fire broke out in the area of the enterprise.
The plant processes up to 10 million tons of hydrocarbon feedstock per year and produces more than 150 types of products, including gasoline, diesel fuel, fuel oil, bitumen, polyethylene, styrene, and ammonia. Before that, the enterprise had already been targeted by Ukrainian drones: after the August 13 attack, a fire broke out there, and after the July 14 raid, oil refining was completely halted. In 2023, drones damaged the primary feedstock processing units at the refinery.
Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that he had approved a plan for long-range strikes on Russia for October. He also said that Kyiv would respond symmetrically to Russian shelling and strike Russian targets if Moscow attacks Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure.
Sources
