Ukrainian Drones Hit Sberbank Data Centre, Fourth Russian Site in a Week

Updated 08:06 UTC, Oct 15, 2026. Developing story.

Ukrainian drones hit the Sberbank data centre at Balakovo in Russia's Saratov region on Wednesday, Oct 14, 2026, a senior bank executive confirmed. It was the fourth Russian data centre struck in a week, after three attacks on sites run by the technology group Yandex.

Sberbank First Deputy Chief Executive Alexander Vedyakhin told reporters the data processing centre had been attacked. He said all of the bank's systems and services were working normally and without disruption. Saratov Governor Roman Busargin said the wider drone attack on Balakovo killed one person and damaged several homes.

A site built for Russia's biggest supercomputer

The Balakovo centre covers about 55,000 square metres on the Volga River. Russian state media reported in 2024 that it is due to host the country's biggest supercomputer, scheduled to start operating in 2027. The site sits near the Balakovo nuclear power plant and the Saratov hydroelectric plant.

Sberbank is Russia's largest bank and, with Yandex, one of its two leading developers of artificial intelligence. Sberbank builds the GigaChat model and Yandex builds YandexGPT. Neither Sberbank nor Yandex has said whether any supercomputer was damaged in the attacks.

Three Yandex sites hit in four days

The first strike came on Oct 8, 2026, at Yandex's data hub in Sasovo in the Ryazan region. Yandex said the attack started a fire, forced a full shutdown, and left it unsure whether the equipment could be restored. The Sasovo site houses two of the three supercomputers Yandex uses to develop its AI model.

On Oct 9, 2026, a second strike partly disabled Yandex's data centre in the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow. On Oct 11, 2026, a third strike shut down the company's data centre in the Vladimir region completely. Yandex said no one was injured in the Vladimir attack, but some services were unavailable.

Ukraine says it is responding to Russian attacks on its own data centres. Russia has struck Ukrainian data centres and telecoms sites over the past month, including targets in central Kyiv, according to Reuters reporting on the earlier strikes.

Putin meets officials, Kremlin denies a link

President Vladimir Putin held a meeting on information security with top officials on Oct 14, 2026, with Sberbank chief German Gref among those due to take part, along with ministers, security officials and central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the meeting was not connected to the drone strikes on the four data centres and called it a wider, systemic discussion.

Russia's defence ministry said more than 900 Ukrainian drones were fired at Russian territory and annexed Crimea overnight into Oct 14, 2026. That figure comes from the ministry and could not be independently verified.

Both AI developers face a hard problem replacing damaged hardware. Sberbank has estimated that Russian firms lag United States and Chinese leaders by up to nine months, in part because Western sanctions make it harder to buy the most advanced chips.