A powerful drone attack in Russia. Among the goals of the largest bank's data center

"We confirm that the data processing center was the target of the attack," Alexander Vedyakhin, deputy chairman of the management board of Sberbank, was quoted by Russian media as saying to journalists in Moscow. He added that none of the facility's employees were injured.

The governor of the region, Roman Busargin, announced the attacks on the Saratov Oblast, located approximately 450 km from Moscow, on Telegram. He reported that one person was killed and civilian facilities were damaged. He did not provide details on the number of drones downed.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, last night the military destroyed 902 drones over 19 regions of the country and over Russian-occupied Crimea.

Increased attacks on data centers

In recent weeks, Russian and Ukrainian sides have intensified attacks on data centers in both countries.

In October, Ukraine hit three of the five data centers of Russia's largest technology company, Yandex, leading to disruptions in the company's services.

Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centers caused internet disruptions and forced some companies to move their servers abroad.

Players in the artificial intelligence market in Russia

Sberbank and Yandex are the main competitors in the field of artificial intelligence in Russia. The domestic market is divided between GigaChat models, owned by Sberbank, and YandexGPT.

Yandex data centers are very popular in Russia. The company uses them to operate its own services and also rents computing power and disk space to store data.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed his belief that the raids on Yandex facilities resulted in a reduction in the activity of internet bots linked to the Kremlin.