In 2026, warfare has become decidedly high tech: Russia and Ukraine have escalated military attacks on each other’s data centers, pursuing a strategy that threatens the cloud computing and AI infrastructure supporting businesses and governments.
Data centers, once viewed as commercial technology infrastructure, are now being targeted alongside power plants, oil refineries and other critical facilities.
Russian forces have struck a data center in Kyiv and several telecommunications facilities, while Ukrainian drones have damaged three major data centers operated by Russian tech giant Yandex and targeted infrastructure belonging to Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the strikes on Yandex as retaliation for Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centers.
For both countries, attacking digital infrastructure offers a way to disrupt military communications and economic activity while also damaging services used by businesses and consumers.
Russia’s Digital Economy Suffers Major Disruptions
The damage to Yandex has caused widespread service outages in Russia, where the company provides cloud computing, financial services, transportation applications and other digital platforms. More than 50,000 Russian businesses rely on Yandex cloud services, making the company’s platform a major component of the country’s digital economy.
Following the attacks, consumers experienced problems accessing digital wallets, ordering transportation and food, and retrieving cloud-stored files. Yandex Pay suspended transactions, preventing customers from transferring funds.
The disruptions also affected businesses outside Russia, with Yandex services experiencing outages in at least eight countries.
The attacks threaten Russia’s AI development capabilities. Yandex uses three AI supercomputers powered by NVIDIA A100 GPUs, which are difficult to replace because of Western sanctions restricting advanced technology exports.
Russia’s domestic data-storage requirements further complicate recovery. Since 2015, Russian law has required companies to store citizens’ personal information inside the country, limiting their ability to transfer critical workloads to foreign facilities.
Ukraine has adopted a different strategy. Following Russia’s 2022 invasion, Ukrainian government agencies and financial institutions transferred substantial amounts of data to cloud infrastructure in Europe and the U.S. This transfer has helped Ukraine maintain digital services despite repeated attacks on its infrastructure.
Global Data Centers Face Growing Military Threats
The Russia-Ukraine conflict is not the only example of military forces targeting computing infrastructure. Earlier this year, Iranian drones struck Amazon Web Services data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, damaging equipment and disrupting cloud services.
AWS subsequently reported that some customer data stored exclusively at two affected facilities could not be recovered. Customers with backups in other regions were generally better positioned to restore operations.
These incidents highlight the physical vulnerability of infrastructure supporting modern cloud computing and AI. Data centers are crammed full of high-tech equipment that doesn’t do well amid explosions. Damage to any of these expensive components can interrupt operations even if the servers themselves remain intact.
The enormous scale of AI facilities adds to the challenge. While traditional data centers have averaged approximately 100,000 square feet, hyperscale facilities can occupy far larger sites. These sprawling facilities are impossible to conceal against missiles and drones.
The military targeting of data centers also creates questions under international humanitarian law. Because cloud facilities frequently support both civilian and military operations, determining whether a particular installation qualifies as a legitimate military target can be difficult.
