THE CRUNCH
A Ukrainian drone strike has damaged a Russian Ministry of Finance data center in the suburbs of Gorodets, roughly 230 miles east of Moscow and more than 600 miles from the frontlines. According to Data Center Dynamics, citing a Russian media outlet, the facility held several state registries, including the Federal Taxation Service's tax database, and is described as one of two key data processing centres of Russia's Federal Tax Service operating in a geo-distributed mode. DCD reported that damage to the facility could potentially affect the operation of Russian state information systems.
The strike is the latest in a series of Ukrainian attacks on Russian data centers since the start of October, which began after Moscow struck Ukrainian data centers. The finance ministry reportedly operates two other data centers, in Dubna in the Moscow region and Yerzovka in the Volgograd region, so losing a third of its facilities could have a major impact on the government services it provides.
Damage does not necessarily mean services go dark: after earlier Ukrainian drone strikes, Russia's Yandex bot traffic collapsed, but its disinformation bot network simply migrated to unaffected data centers and continued operating as normal. Data centers have also been caught up in the Middle East conflict, where Iranian forces hit AWS sites in the UAE and Bahrain, prompting Amazon to advise clients to move to other regions to avoid further disruptions.