Ukrainian drones have struck a data center under construction for Russian state lender Sberbank in Balakovo, Saratov region, overnight on October 14, killing one woman and damaging several residential buildings.
Alexander Vedyakhin, First Deputy CEO, Sberbank, confirmed the attack, saying the bank’s systems and online services continued to operate normally. The bank also said no employees were injured as reported by The Moscow Times.
However, users across Russia reported disruptions to Sberbank’s services such as its GigaChat AI platform and other major online services, according to outage tracker Detector404. No link between the reported disruptions and the drone attack was established.
Roman Busargin, Governor, Saratov region, told Meduza all infrastructure facilities in the city were “operating normally” without specifically identifying the data center as a target.
Readers will recall that the strike follows Ukrainian drone attacks last week on data centers belonging to Russian technology company Yandex in the Ryazan, Vladimir and Kaluga regions.
Ukraine claims the attacks were retaliations to Russian attacks on Kyiv data centers in September which damaged data centers used by internet providers UTELS and Pavutyna, disrupting internet services for about 100,000 households in Kyiv and the surrounding region. In mid September Russian drone strikes targeted BeMobile and UCloud data centers whose services were both affected.
Sberbank began construction of the Balakovo facility in 2021 after announcing the project in 2020. The center is expected to cover approximately 55,000 to 60,000 square meters and is scheduled for completion in 2030. One of the bank’s supercomputers is also being built at the site.