14th October 2026
The war between Russia and Ukraine is opening up another front, and it is one that could have implications far beyond the battlefield. Both countries are now attacking digital infrastructure, including the data centres that help keep modern economies functioning.
The latest attacks have exposed an uncomfortable weakness. A country can have sophisticated technology, powerful computers and an extensive internet network, yet still suffer serious disruption when key facilities are damaged.
For Britain, and particularly Scotland as it considers major new data centre and artificial intelligence developments, the question is straightforward. What happens when the infrastructure on which businesses and public services depend is no longer available?
Three Russian data centres hit by Ukrainian drones
Between 8 and 11 October, Ukrainian drones struck three data centres operated by Yandex, one of Russia’s largest technology companies. The facilities were in Sasovo, Kaluga and Vladimir, in different parts of western Russia.
The attacks caused substantial damage. The Sasovo facility was shut down, parts of the Kaluga infrastructure were put out of action, and the Vladimir centre was subsequently closed. Yandex said its remaining infrastructure was unstable and that it was operating in emergency mode. The Russian government confirmed on 13 October that it was discussing the problems created by the attacks.
Yandex is sometimes described as Russia’s equivalent of Google. Its business covers far more than internet searches. It provides navigation, email, online storage, cloud computing, artificial intelligence services, payments, taxis, food deliveries and other services used by millions of people.
Consequently, damage to its data centres has caused problems extending well beyond the company itself.
Reported disruptions have included Yandex Cloud, which other businesses use to run their websites and computer systems; Yandex Pay; and services connected with taxis, deliveries and other online activities. Other websites and businesses that rely on Yandex’s infrastructure have also reported difficulties.
For a business, this can mean more than a temporarily unavailable website. If its software, customer records or databases are hosted by a provider that suddenly goes offline, staff may be unable to take orders, process transactions or access the information needed to operate.
One Russian start-up told Reuters that its users could not access its service after the attacks and that it had been unable to reach its backup database through Yandex Cloud. It had no confirmation that its data had been lost, but the interruption threatened its business and its relationship with customers.
That distinction is important. A service being unavailable does not necessarily mean that the data has been destroyed. However, if the systems needed to access or restore that data are also affected, recovery can become much more difficult.
The full financial cost of the attacks remains uncertain. Nor is there evidence that Russia’s entire internet has collapsed. Other facilities and alternative routes can keep many services running. But the incidents show how the loss of a relatively small number of major facilities can cause disruption across a much wider network.
Russia has also been attacking Ukraine’s digital infrastructure
These attacks did not happen in isolation. Russia has also struck Ukrainian data centres and telecommunications infrastructure in recent weeks.
The consequences have included damage to facilities supporting digital services and temporary internet disruptions affecting large numbers of households. Reuters reported that an earlier attack had been followed by connectivity problems affecting around 100,000 households in the Kyiv region.
Ukraine’s response has included moving some digital infrastructure underground, reflecting the growing danger to facilities that were once considered primarily commercial rather than military targets.
Ukraine says its attacks on Yandex are a response to Russian strikes on Ukrainian technology infrastructure. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has described the approach as a response in kind.
The result is an increasingly dangerous cycle in which the technology supporting everyday civilian life becomes caught up in the conflict.
There is also a difficult question about the consequences for ordinary people. Even when a government or military argues that an infrastructure target has strategic value, the services affected may be used by millions of civilians and thousands of businesses.
The attacks demonstrate that digital infrastructure can be a point of vulnerability in modern warfare, just as electricity supplies, fuel depots, transport links and communications networks have long been.
Why can one damaged building cause so many problems?
A data centre is a building containing computer servers, storage systems and networking equipment. Companies use these facilities to store information, operate applications and provide services over the internet.
Some businesses own their own facilities. Others rent computing capacity from specialist providers, known as cloud companies. This arrangement can be efficient because businesses do not have to build and maintain their own expensive computer infrastructure.
The difficulty arises when many apparently separate services depend on the same underlying provider.
A taxi service, an online shop, a payment system and a business website may look like completely separate operations to their customers. Behind the scenes, however, they may rely on the same data centre, cloud platform, telecommunications links or electricity supply.
If that shared infrastructure fails, several businesses can be affected simultaneously.
Data centres are designed with safeguards. They may have backup generators, alternative communications links, duplicate equipment and systems that move workloads to another location if one facility fails.
But redundancy only works if the alternative systems are genuinely independent and have enough spare capacity. A backup that depends on the same power network, the same communications route or the same damaged provider may offer less protection than expected.
There is another complication. Moving a large computer workload to another location is not always as simple as flicking a switch. The replacement facility must have sufficient capacity, the correct software, access to the necessary data and a tested process for taking over.
In some circumstances, restoring service may take hours. In others, it could take days or considerably longer.
What should Britain learn from this?
Britain is not at war with Russia on the scale seen in Ukraine, and the immediate risks are different. Nevertheless, the underlying lesson applies to any country that increasingly depends on digital systems.
We should not assume that because a service is online, it is automatically secure or resilient.
Consider the consequences if a major cloud provider suffered a serious outage in Britain. Businesses might lose access to their accounting systems, customer databases, online shops and booking platforms. Payment processing could be disrupted. Public services that depend on external technology providers could experience difficulties.
Hospitals, local authorities, transport operators and emergency services all depend on digital systems to varying degrees. The precise effects of an outage would depend on the systems involved and the backup arrangements available, but the wider principle is clear: digital disruption can quickly become an economic and public-service problem.
Cyberattacks, equipment failure, fire, extreme weather, power shortages and physical attacks can all cause interruptions. A resilient system must be designed to cope with more than one type of failure.
The first requirement is to avoid creating single points of failure. Critical services should not depend entirely on one building, one power connection, one communications route or one supplier.
The second is to maintain independent backups. Keeping a second copy of information is not enough if it cannot be accessed when the main system fails. Businesses need to test whether they can restore their data and resume operations without relying on the very infrastructure that has failed.
The third is to plan for a prolonged outage. Emergency arrangements should cover not only a short interruption but also the possibility that equipment cannot be replaced quickly or that an alternative provider has no spare capacity.
Finally, companies and public bodies need to understand their dependencies. A council may believe it has outsourced a technical service successfully, but it still needs to know what happens if its supplier cannot deliver. The same applies to businesses using cloud services.
These are not arguments against technology. They are arguments for taking the risks as seriously as the benefits.
Scotland’s data centre ambitions need to include resilience
The issue is particularly relevant to Scotland as investment in data centres and artificial intelligence infrastructure attracts growing attention.
Large facilities can bring investment, construction work, demand for electricity and opportunities for technology businesses. But the economic case should not be judged solely by the size of the investment or the number of jobs promised.
A major data centre is also a concentration of valuable equipment and a potential point of dependency for the services that use it.
Scotland should therefore ask some practical questions whenever a substantial development is proposed.
Where will the facility obtain its electricity, and what happens if the supply is interrupted? How will cooling systems operate during a failure? Are telecommunications connections genuinely independent? Can the workloads and data be moved elsewhere if the site becomes unavailable? How long would recovery take, and who pays for the additional safeguards?
These questions are particularly important when considering large artificial intelligence developments, which may contain expensive specialist equipment and require substantial amounts of electricity and cooling.
A facility does not become resilient simply because it is new, expensive or technologically advanced.
There is also a wider economic question. If several major Scottish businesses or public services depend on the same cloud provider, would they all be affected by a single failure? Could they switch to another provider, and would the alternative have enough capacity to take them on?
Scotland's position within the UK electricity and communications networks also matters. Resilience requires coordination between data centre operators, energy suppliers, telecommunications companies, businesses and government. No individual site can guarantee that the wider systems on which it depends will always work.
Could smaller, distributed systems be safer?
One possible response is to spread critical systems across several locations rather than concentrating everything in a small number of very large facilities.
That does not mean that every business should build its own data centre. Large shared facilities can be more efficient and easier to secure professionally. Nor does it mean that smaller facilities are automatically safer.
The important factor is whether the systems are genuinely independent.
Two data centres in different buildings may still share the same electricity supply, telecommunications route or software provider. If both depend on the same underlying infrastructure, a single failure could affect them together.
Conversely, a well-designed network of facilities in separate locations, with independent connections and tested backup arrangements, can provide greater resilience.
For essential services, it may also make sense to keep some basic operations available locally during a wider outage. A business might need a way to record orders, maintain essential customer information or continue limited operations when its internet connection is lost.
The right solution will vary according to the service involved. A streaming service can perhaps tolerate a period of disruption more easily than an emergency communications system or a hospital service.
That is why resilience requirements should reflect the consequences of failure, not simply the size of the technology investment.
The cost of resilience is part of the cost of technology
There is a temptation to treat backup systems as an unnecessary expense until something goes wrong.
Maintaining spare capacity, duplicate equipment, independent connections and regular recovery tests costs money. It can also mean that some equipment is not being used at full capacity all the time.
But those costs need to be compared with the potential losses from an extended outage. A business that cannot process payments or access its records may lose revenue, customers and confidence. A public service interruption can create costs that are much harder to measure.
The Russian experience is a reminder that the consequences of failure can spread beyond the organisation whose equipment has been damaged.
Government should therefore expect operators of critical digital infrastructure to demonstrate how they would maintain or restore essential services during a serious incident. Planning should include physical damage as well as cyberattacks, power failures and telecommunications outages.
It should also be clear who is responsible for recovery, how quickly services are expected to return and whether the arrangements have been tested in practice.
A warning for the digital age
The attacks on Russian and Ukrainian data centres do not mean that Britain is about to suffer the same fate. Nor do they prove that large data centres are inherently unsafe.
They do, however, expose a weakness that can be overlooked when discussing the benefits of digital technology. Modern economies have become increasingly dependent on infrastructure that most people never see and rarely think about.
When it works, the result is convenience, speed and efficiency. When it fails, the consequences can reach into businesses, household finances and public services.
For Scotland, the lesson is not to turn away investment in data centres or artificial intelligence. It is to ensure that resilience is treated as an essential part of the investment rather than an optional extra.
Before approving or encouraging major new facilities, governments and communities should ask not only what they will deliver when everything is working, but what happens when something goes badly wrong.
The real test of a modern digital economy is not whether it can provide millions of services when the system is running normally. It is whether those services can survive when part of the system suddenly disappears.
For further information go to -
Reuters – Kremlin discusses Yandex problems after Ukrainian strikes, 13 October 2026
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kremlin-says-government-is-discussing-yandexs-problems-after-ukrainian-strikes-2026-10-13/
The Record – Ukraine strikes third Yandex data centre, 12 October 2026
https://therecord.media/ukraine-strikes-third-yandex-data-center