Ukrainian drones hit Sberbank's Balakovo data center, following attacks on Yandex facilities. Sberbank says services remain normal, while experts warn of AI setbacks.
Ukrainian drones struck Russia's largest data center on Wednesday, an attack that appears to target Moscow's efforts to develop artificial intelligence capabilities comparable to those in the United States and China. The strike on the Balakovo facility, owned by Sberbank, follows three attacks in the previous week on data centers operated by Russian technology group Yandex.
Sberbank First Deputy CEO Alexander Vedyakhin confirmed the attack but stated that the bank's operations were unaffected. "We confirm that the data processing center was attacked. At the same time, all of Sberbank's systems and services are operating normally and without disruption," Vedyakhin told reporters.
However, The Moscow Times reported that users across Russia noted disruptions to Sberbank and its GigaChat AI service, as well as other online platforms, according to outage tracker Detector404. The reports did not establish a direct link between these disruptions and the drone attacks. NASA’s satellite fire-monitoring system showed multiple fires in Balakovo. Saratov region Governor Roman Busargin said "all infrastructure facilities" were operating normally but noted that one woman was killed and several homes were damaged in the broader drone strikes.
The Balakovo center is located approximately 650-700 km from the Ukrainian border. Ukrainska Pravda, citing Reuters, reported the facility has a design power capacity of 82 MW, houses 3,000 server racks, and up to 120,000 servers. It is situated near the Balakovo nuclear power plant, which supplies its energy, and the Saratov hydroelectric power plant. No damage was reported to either power plant.
Sberbank and Yandex are Russia's leading developers of AI, with their respective models GigaChat and YandexGPT dominating the domestic market. The Yandex data centers hit earlier hosted all three of that company's operating supercomputers. Neither Yandex nor Sberbank has confirmed whether the supercomputers, used to train AI models, were damaged.
Russia's state RIA Novosti news agency reported in 2024 that the Sberbank center would host Russia's biggest supercomputer, scheduled to go into operation in 2027. Sberbank currently operates two functioning supercomputers. Its most advanced, Christofari Neo, is based on Nvidia A100 chips and ranked 167th in the Top 500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers. Yandex's most advanced system, Chervonenkis, is ranked 101st.
Both companies lag global leaders in the United States and China by up to nine months, according to Sberbank's own estimates. This gap is partly due to Western sanctions that hinder access to advanced hardware. Sberbank CEO German Gref said on Sept. 29, "It's clear what difficulties we face when purchasing modern graphics processing units. Both we and Yandex suffer from this," identifying it as the biggest reason for Russia's lag in AI.
Sberbank is in talks to buy chips from Chinese makers, but Vedyakhin told Reuters on June 3 that Nvidia's monopoly on its CUDA software platform, an AI industry standard, is an even greater problem. IT expert Mikhail Klimarev told Reuters that replacing chips could take a long time due to sanctions. "The equipment is being imported, but it's done at a high cost, through indirect routes. First, you need to negotiate so that someone is willing to sell it to you and is not afraid of sanctions," he said.
President Vladimir Putin held a previously unannounced meeting on Wednesday with top officials on "information security," which Sberbank CEO German Gref attended. The Kremlin stated the meeting was not linked to the attacks on data centers.
Some commentators compared the lack of reported disruption at state-controlled Sberbank with Yandex, whose taxi and food delivery units had reported disruptions. Military blogger Alexander Kots wrote, "This is a great example of what a business owner can do to protect their assets." Under an August decree by Putin, the state can take over administration of poorly protected facilities.
Russia's digital development ministry said it was in talks with the military on protecting data centers, while some lawmakers called for moving them underground. Valery Yermakov, deputy CEO of state-controlled Rostelecom, told a conference in Moscow, "We need a so-called Doomsday data vault."
The attacks highlight the vulnerability of critical digital infrastructure in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. While Sberbank claims operational continuity, the strikes on facilities housing supercomputers threaten to exacerbate existing challenges in Russia's AI sector, which already struggles with sanctions and supply chain restrictions. The incident underscores the strategic importance of data centers in modern warfare and the potential long-term impact on national AI capabilities.
Sources
This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.
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