Drone strikes attributed to Ukraine on Wednesday struck what is described as the country's largest data centre, with the assault forming part of a broader pattern of attacks that analysts say appear directed at infrastructure underpinning efforts to advance domestic artificial intelligence to a level comparable with developments in the United States and China.
An incident targeting the Balakovo data centre — a facility belonging to Sberbank, which operates as the country's largest banking and technology group — came after three separate incidents involving data centres linked to the Russian technology company Yandex over the preceding week, with a spokesperson for the organisation confirming that the data processing facility had been targeted.
Vedyakhin, who holds the position of first deputy chief executive at Sberbank, told reporters that every platform and service the bank runs had continued to function without interruption throughout that period.
Reporting from 2024 indicated that the Sberbank building hit on Wednesday had been earmarked to host a computing installation projected to rank as the nation's largest supercomputer once it came online, with that operational date pencilled in for 2027. Three supercomputers belonging to Yandex were all housed within the data centre facilities that had previously sustained damage.
As of now, no statement from either Yandex or Sberbank has addressed whether the high-performance computing hardware deployed in training their artificial intelligence systems sustained any damage during the attacks attributed to Ukraine.
Ranked among the foremost builders of artificial intelligence technology within Russia, Sberbank competes in that space alongside Yandex, its principal domestic counterpart. Two AI language platforms — GigaChat, developed by Sberbank, and YandexGPT — together account for the bulk of domestic demand in that space.
Procurement of the most advanced graphics processing units poses documented obstacles for both firms, which trail their counterparts in the United States and China by as many as nine months on model development timelines — a gap that Sberbank's own internal assessments attribute in part to the hardware access constraints imposed by Western sanctions, with a company representative noting the difficulties involved in sourcing contemporary GPU technology.
Sberbank chief German Gref, speaking on September 29, described the talent gap as the primary factor holding back both his organisation and Yandex — and, by extension, placing Russia at a disadvantage relative to the United States and China in artificial intelligence development.
In remarks to a broadcaster on 3 June, Vedyakhin pointed to Nvidia's hold over the CUDA software ecosystem — now embedded across the AI industry as a default standard — as a more entrenched barrier than the supply conversations Sberbank had been conducting with chip producers in China.
Nvidia's A100 processors — the chips Yandex had disclosed as the backbone of its supercomputing infrastructure — belong to a 2020 product generation, one that the manufacturer has since moved beyond with the newer H100 line. Two operational supercomputers are currently held within Sberbank's computing infrastructure.
Ranked 167th on the Top500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers, the Christofari Neo — the most advanced among them — runs on Nvidia A100 chips and sits at a facility in Moscow. Sitting at position 101 on that same index, the Chervonenkis system represents Yandex's most powerful supercomputing hardware.
Klimarev, who works in IT, told a news outlet that sourcing replacement chips under the current trade restrictions could take a long time, and that damage to supercomputing infrastructure posed a setback for the country's artificial intelligence sector — a field already navigating those same trade barriers, with hardware now reaching the country through more expensive, indirect supply routes, he said. He explained that reaching an agreement with a willing seller — one untroubled by the prospect of sanctions — forms the necessary first step.
Certain observers drew a contrast between the absence of reported outages at state-owned Sberbank and the service interruptions Yandex's taxi and food delivery divisions had experienced, treating the comparison as evidence of stronger infrastructure protection at the bank — a reading that military blogger Alexander Kots echoed in a post, arguing it illustrated what asset owners could do to harden their operations. A decree Putin signed in August gave the state authority to assume administrative control of facilities deemed insufficiently protected.
Positioned near both the Balakovo nuclear power plant — from which the data centre draws its electricity — and the Saratov hydroelectric power plant, the Sberbank facility occupies a site chosen with energy supply in mind. Both facilities came through the assault without any recorded structural harm.
Officials there attributed the activity to defensive measures taken against incoming strikes on their own digital infrastructure. Strikes on oil-processing facilities, electricity infrastructure, port installations, and online retail operations have been carried out by forces on both sides of the conflict.
The ministry responsible for digital development disclosed this week that it had opened discussions with military officials about safeguarding data centre infrastructure, while certain legislators put forward a proposal to relocate the facilities below ground, where drone strikes would be unable to reach the hardware.
