Ukrainian drones hit Sberbank’s new mega data center deep inside Russia’s Saratov region
Ukrainian attack drones struck Sberbank’s newly built Mega Data Center in Balakovo, Saratov Oblast, hitting a 122.2‑billion‑ruble project designed to house up to 120,000 servers and signaling Ukraine’s ability to reach digital infrastructure far from the front line.
A new front in Ukraine’s drone campaign opened overnight with a strike on one of Russia’s largest data infrastructure projects.
Ukrainian attack drones hit Sberbank’s newly built Mega Data Center in the city of Balakovo, Saratov Oblast, according to reporting from the scene. Footage showed at least one drone flying directly into the front entrance of the facility, which belongs to Russia’s biggest bank.
The Balakovo complex was designed as one of Russia’s largest data centers. Project documents value it at 122.2 billion rubles, with plans for around 3,000 server racks, capacity for up to 120,000 servers and electrical capacity of up to 82 megawatts. Those figures place it among the country’s largest hubs for banking and cloud computing workloads.
There was no immediate official information on the extent of the damage or the impact on Sberbank’s services. It’s unclear how many systems were already live in the building at the time of the strike.
The attack fits into a wider Ukrainian effort to hit high‑value targets well inside Russia using long‑range drones. In recent months, Ukrainian forces have repeatedly struck airfields, oil facilities and other logistics nodes in Russian territory. Balakovo lies far from the front line, so drones reaching this site show how Ukrainian planners are pushing that range.
For Russia, the choice of target is sensitive. The Mega Data Center in Balakovo was meant to serve as a flagship project supporting Sberbank’s digital services. Images of a drone flying into its entrance cut against Moscow’s message that strategic infrastructure is safely shielded from Ukrainian strikes.
Analysts now expect Russia to reassess how it protects large data centers and similar technical facilities. Signals to watch include any detailed statement from Sberbank on outages or repairs, official Russian claims about the effectiveness of local air defenses in Saratov Oblast and any follow‑on Ukrainian attempts to strike comparable sites elsewhere in Russia.
Sources
- OSINT