Ukraine's newest front line is a server room
Three Russian data centers knocked out in four days, and people as far away as Armenia lost their taxi apps. Both sides now treat computers like power plants.
Basically, Ukraine has started switching off parts of Russia's internet, one building at a time.
What happened
First Ryazan, then Kaluga, and now Vladimir, east of Moscow. A Ukrainian drone shut down the data center that Yandex, Russia's biggest tech company, runs there. Russian media say people in dozens of cities briefly couldn't order taxis or use banking apps. Users in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia were hit too.
Please note
Russia did this first. In late September, Russian drones hit data centers and telecom sites around Kyiv and cut internet for about 100,000 households. Moscow said those sites served Ukraine's military. Kyiv said they also carry air-raid alerts and everyday life. A former official now says these attacks have increased in recent weeks.
What it means
In this war, servers are targets just like power plants. When a building full of computers goes dark, you don't hear an explosion in your street. You notice your apps stop working.
The quiet lesson is backups. Ukraine moved its government data to cloud servers abroad, and other countries are now copying that playbook. A country that keeps all its data in one place has one more thing to lose.
The strikes also land while Russia keeps hitting Ukraine's power grid ahead of winter. On Saturday, a rare daytime attack on Kyiv cut power in some districts, disrupted water and briefly stopped the metro.
What we don't know yet
- How long the damage in Vladimir lasts, or whether the outages were brief.
- Whether Russia answers with more strikes on Ukraine's data centers this week.
Note this down
This week: watch for Russian strikes on Ukrainian data centers in reply.