Drones have struck a major data centre belonging to Russia's largest search engine and AI company Yandex, according to a company statement.
The company said the attack targeted a facility in Russia's Ryazan region, causing a fire and forcing Yandex to fully suspend the centre's operations.
Though there was no immediate confirmation from Kyiv, the attack appears to be the first confirmed major Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian data centre. It follows a wave of Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centres in recent weeks.
Earlier, Russia pounded Ukraine with waves of missiles and drones in one of its most "vile strikes" of the war so far, president Volodymyr Zelensky said, killing at least 25 people including five children, injuring another 100 and damaging industrial facilities and energy infrastructure.
The heaviest death toll was in Pryluky in Ukraine's northern Chernihiv region, where a Russian missile obliterated a five-storey residential building.
Noting that the attacks coincided with Russian president Vladimir Putin's birthday, he said: "This is the kind of birthday present that Putin gave himself: the killing of children, the killing of people.”
Ukraine grapples with a shortage of troops at the front after over 4 years of war
Ukraine’s advances in drone technology and tactics have captured the world’s attention. Despite those innovations, one problem has plagued the country since the start of Russia’s invasion: a shortage of combat-ready troops.
Ukraine always has been outmanned by Russia, but as the war drags through its fifth year, the need for personnel is increasingly acute, commanders and analysts say, with some units at only half strength. There just aren't enough forces to fully exploit the battlefield advantages resulting from the drone innovations.
“Based on the equipment and the number of people we have today, we barely have enough to hold the sector we currently have," said a deputy commander of the Da Vinci Wolves battalion in eastern Ukraine's Pokrovsk area, a focus of Russia’s offensive.
"To move forward would inevitably mean greater losses,” said the deputy commander, who insisted on identifying himself only as “Afer” because of military rules.
Long-standing mobilisation problems, including draft dodging and desertion, make it harder for Ukraine to build its reserves, according to military experts, resulting in only incremental changes along the 1,250km front line.
US and Russia explore gas sales to Europe amid Ukraine war, say sources
Top Russian and US officials, including US Special Envoy Jared Kushner, have held talks about bringing a US investor into the Nord Stream pipelines that delivered gas to Germany before Russia invaded Ukraine, five people with knowledge of the situation said.
The discussions included Kirill Dmitriev, a close adviser to Russian president Vladimir Putin, and Kushner, the son-in-law of US president Donald Trump, the people said. Kushner, who has been trying to broker a truce between Russia and Ukraine, views doing business as central to restoring peace.
Such a deal would enable US investors to profit from energy flows to Europe once the war ends.
Dmitriev and Kushner have met in Moscow and New York in recent weeks. While it was unclear to what degree they discussed Nord Stream on those occasions, the topic remains on the agenda, two of the people told Reuters.
"Any deals will have to be negotiated by Russia with DFC (US International Development Finance Corporation) and Treasury and must benefit United States taxpayers and companies," a White House official said, when asked about the pipeline discussions.
How Ukraine is producing its own ballistic missiles amid tight global supplies
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian ballistic missiles remained the major challenge for Ukraine, adding that he and his team were "every day looking for Patriot (missile interception) systems that can and must protect people's lives".
Last week, he said Ukraine had fired its first domestically made ballistic missile in combat, produced by Fire Point. In an interview with Reuters, he said he expected the company to have a longer-range FP-9 missile ready by the autumn. Fire Point has said that weapon will be able to reach Moscow.
Ukraine received a new $1.34bn tranche from the European Union on Wednesday and will channel the funds towards defence needs, prime minister Sergii Koretskyi said.
The US-made Patriot system is the only weapon in Ukraine's arsenal capable of stopping high-velocity ballistic missiles but tight global supplies have been drained by the Iran war as well as the Ukraine conflict.
Russia's defence ministry said its targets included sites where Ukrainian defence company Fire Point manufactures and stores its Flamingo cruise missiles and medium- and long-range drones in Kyiv as well as regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava and Kharkiv.
Russia's largest search engine targeted in 'first major data centre strike by Kyiv'
Drones have struck a major data centre belonging to Russia's largest search engine and AI company Yandex, according to a company statement.
The company said the attack targeted a facility in Russia's Ryazan region, causing a fire and forcing Yandex to fully suspend the centre's operations.
Yandex said it was dealing withthe consequences and restoring affected services. It said its core consumer services were not affected.
On the website of its Yandex Cloud service, the company said there were problems with the electricity supply at one data centre "zone", and recommended customers use other zones.
Yandex runs YandexGPT, one of Russia's leading generative AI models, and its search engine dominates the domestic market in Russia, far outstripping international competitors like Google.
Though there was no immediate confirmation of the attack from Kyiv, it appears to the be the first confirmed major Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian data centre.
It follows a wave of Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centres in recent weeks.
Big jump in reported drone interceptions
Russia's defence ministry said its forces had carried out a "massive strike" on military-industrial facilities in Kyiv and other Ukrainian regions, using high-precision land-, sea- and air-launched weapons, as well as drones.
Ukraine's air force said it had downed just over 80 per cent of the 46 jet-powered drones launched by Russia, a sharp increase from recent weeks when, on average, air defences took down 50 per cent to 60 per cent.
Since the summer, Russia has used increasing numbers of the new high-velocity drones in round-the-clock attacks on Kyiv and other cities, with Ukraine's air defences struggling to cope with their speed.
The air force did not explain the jump in the interception rate and did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
People shelter overnight in Kyiv metro
Ukrainian officials and military intelligence shared warnings of the upcoming attacks on Wednesday, and many Kyiv residents took shelter in the city's underground metro stations.
Several loud explosions reverberated through the capital during the night.
"The metro is better because we live on the 9th floor of a high-rise, and it's really scary when you're on the 9th floor and missiles are flying at you," Lesia, a 49-year-old Kyiv resident, told Reuters.
Ukrainian officials said Russian ballistic missiles as well as drones had targeted Kyiv.
At least 25 killed in Ukraine as Zelensky condemns one of Russia's most 'vile strikes'
Russia pounded Ukraine with waves of missiles and drones in one of its most "vile strikes" on Wednesday, president Volodymyr Zelensky said, killing at least 25 people, including children, and damaging industrial facilities and energy infrastructure.
The heaviest death toll was in Pryluky in Ukraine's northern Chernihiv region, where a Russian missile obliterated a five-storey residential building.
Zelensky said 19 people died in the attack, including five children. Zelensky said 25 people had been killed in the strikes throughout the country, with 100 injured. Interior minister Ivan Vyhivskyi put the death toll at 28.
The president noted that the attacks coincided with Russian president Vladimir Putin's birthday. "This is the kind of birthday present that Putin gave himself: the killing of children, the killing of people," Zelensky said in his nightly video address
Russia says forces struck ship carrying cargo for Ukrainian military
Russia's defence ministry said on Wednesday that its forces had struck a vessel it said was heading to the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odesa with a cargo for the Ukrainian military. The statement on Telegram gave no further details of the strike.
The ministry also said Russian drones had hit infrastructure in Ukrainian ports, without elaborating.
South Korea says to take action if illegal Russian fuel shipments confirmed
South Korea's foreign ministry said on Thursday the government would take a legal action over any illegal fuel shipments to Russia if they were confirmed, following a media report analysing port records and ship-tracking data.
The ministry said it had not confirmed whether South Korean fuel, including diesel, had been exported to Russia.
It added that exports of some products such as diesel and jet fuel for commercial purposes, referred to in the Guardian report, were not included in a South Korean exports control list to Russia.
Search abandoned for missing crew of ship that sank in drone attack
Bulgaria has halted its search for the missing crew of a ship that sank after being hit by a drone about 70 nautical miles off its coast, officials say.
Early on Tuesday, two ships were hit in a drone attack in the Black Sea exclusive economic zone of Bulgaria, a Nato member.
One ship sank and the other was damaged. The crew of the damaged ship were rescued, but the crew of the sunken one remain missing.
Vice-Admiral Rumen Nikolov of the Maritime Administration Executive Agency said 12 crew members were believed to have been on board the ship that sank, all of them from Syria.
The rescue operation will not resume, he added. "There are no traces of the sailors from the first ship, and there will be none. There is also no information about drone remains," he told reporters.
It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack involving air and sea drones in waters off the coastal town of Byala in eastern Bulgaria, but there are growing concerns about hybrid attacks by Russia as it wages war in Ukraine.
"If we look at the nature of the cargo and the direction in which the ships were moving, then logically speaking, the result argues in favour of Russia," Prime Minister Rumen Radev said.