3rd Yandex Cloud Data Center Was Hit (status.yandex.cloud)

535 pointsby defly15 hours ago640 comments

vld_chk 10 hours ago

For people who are “worried” that Ukraine targets data centers: Ukraine did not start it.

For the entire September, Russia conducted 10+ strikes on all key telecom, and internet provider data centers in Ukraine.

Now it is just a return

m4rtink 10 hours ago

Not to mention dozens of civilians killed by Russian strikes just in the last few days, including many children...

vld_chk 9 hours ago

Yes, those sick psychopaths want to turn Kyiv and other major cities into uninhabitable deserts. They target bridges with regular cars in the middle of the day; attack buses, trains, residential buildings, gas stations, shopping malls, grocery stores, water and gas utilities. They declared a total war on Ukraine and removed all constraints on their methods.

mcrady 8 hours ago

Here's a playground hit this week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfXCX_PMbA0

sinuhe69 8 hours ago

Not to mention a sudden ebb of bot traffic all over the world!

trombuance 6 hours ago

How did you measure that?

alt227 5 hours ago

https://radar.cloudflare.com/bots/as13238?dateRange=7d

Discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50041619

troupo 4 hours ago

Also, purely anecdotally: there are almost no "Zelensky needs to step down" or "Ukraine is a corrupt state" comments under any of the today's posts about Ukraine on X.

bonzini 3 hours ago

Too bad Trump said it this time directly...

jmuguy an hour ago

Meh, I wish Cloudflare would break down its "bot" traffic a little more. I assume most of that is just Yandex's scraper going down. Which is good for disrupting Russian daily life but its not like their propaganda machine is knocked out.

jacquesm an hour ago

There is a noticeable drop in troll traffic to various dutch news sites. Perhaps coincidence.

miki123211 8 hours ago

One interesting fact I've heard recently (I live in Poland; we share a border with Ukraine as well as with a part of Russia).

Russia went all in on "digital sovereignty." This is partly because the Russian government cares deeply about censoring what their citizens can see (which they can't do if those citizens consume content from American services), partly because the American services themselves cut Russia off because of sanctions-related concerns.

This makes Russian datacenters a much more attractive target for the Ukrainians. While Russia can (and does) bomb Ukrainian datacenters, the fact that Ukrainians are so reliant on US infrastructure (and could rapidly move local workloads to western clouds if the need was great enough) makes such operations far less attractive. It's much easier for Ukraine to strike some facility near Moscow than it is for Russia to strike Ashburn, Virginia.

Given the geopolitical concerns from both the east and the west, this makes the question of whether Europe should move content off of US infrastructure a lot more complicated.

trebligdivad 8 hours ago

I'd heard (from someone trying to use them) that net connections into the Chinese clouds was very busy in the days around the start of the war, so the suggestion is they have critical stuff mirrored there.

jacquesm 8 hours ago

Correct. China has been instrumental in keeping russia supplied and online for the duration of this war.

baq 7 hours ago

It's also been instrumental in supplying Ukraine to the point they had to schedule Russian and Ukrainian delegations around each other in their factories when they were visiting at the same times. [0]

China is the only true winner of that war.

[0]: https://medium.com/@hayekesteloo/china-vs-ukraine-ft-investi...

jacquesm 7 hours ago

That's precisely the problem. You can't credibly supply both sides in a war where one party clearly is the aggressor and pretend you are neutral. You either supply nobody and then you get to play your neutrality card or you pick a side. If you supply both sides you're just a cynical war profiteer without a conscience.

baq 7 hours ago

I don't think they're pretending to be neutral. I'm not sure they even think in those categories at all. They'll happily sell as much equipment as they can manufacture for hard cash or barter it for grain, oil or gas as long as the war is going on. They'll start considering options once there's a clear winner on the battlefield.

NicoJuicy 5 hours ago

They haven't forgotten Russias role for the century of humiliation either.

Russia is economically becoming a vassal state just like north Korea is.

addaon 5 hours ago

I think this is why it's so important to figure out a path to returning Königsberg to western control before the war runs its course. If we assume that Russia is basically disassembled and parted out, it's looking increasingly certain that China ends up in either nominal or practical control of almost all of those parts. For the most part this seems inevitable at this point, but there still seems to be a path to keep Königsberg as a western region; and an optimistic can imagine keeping St. Petersburg as well, but I don't see a path for forward action on that before Russia's collapse, and I don't really see how the west can act faster than China once the collapse begins.

NicoJuicy 4 hours ago

China currently cares most about the East till the natural resources.

The East because they are blockaded at sea currently, if they would invade Taiwan.

And they already have huge economical leverage there.

Russia is basically falling apart. But in a dictatorship, stuff like that is only seen sudden, when it collapses.

Putin seems to be making many of the mistakes of pre 1991.

JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago

> China currently cares most about the East till the natural resources

The simplest solution would be to reboot the Siberian Republic [1] as a Chinese suzerainty. Ideally after Putin dies as part of a deal to the new ascender. Maybe together with giving them personal co-ownership in some major ventures there.

> East because they are blockaded at sea currently, if they would invade Taiwan

Siberia and Outer Mongolia remain closer and thus cheaper and more-secure sources than anything coming in over ocean, which in essence means from Australia, South America or Africa.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Republic_(1918)

NicoJuicy 2 hours ago

There's an opening through the Kuril Islands.

Russia is recently bluffing a bit there, Putin had a visit for the first time recently, I think it's China related:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuril_Islands_dispute

China is already owning the area with investments and a lot of workers/projects there are already Chinese. Seems like Russia already lost control ( unofficially)

Qiu_Zhanxuan an hour ago

Good Luck annexing Kaliningrad back, it may already be filled with nuclear warheads pointed at its neighbors

pmontra 14 minutes ago

One should ask what do the people of Königsberg / Kaliningrad want to be.

yolp5 7 hours ago

> You either supply nobody and then you get to play your neutrality card or you pick a side. If you supply both sides you're just a cynical war profiteer without a conscience.

Yes, and that helped turn the US into the global hegemony it is today. No wonder China wants a wack. Power doesn't need a conscience.

cowboy_henk 7 hours ago

China's behavior makes sense if they consider both Russia and Ukraine (the latter being a proxy for the west) to be enemies of some sort. Let your enemies fight each other and waste resources while you yourself profit.

The same can be said about the US <> EU/Russia in this conflict. Why bother helping Ukraine/Europe win the war if you consider them at least partly hostile? Better to let them fight your own enemy (Russia) and trade with both sides to your own advantage.

coffeebeqn 6 hours ago

The US considers Europe to be hostile?

tancop 6 hours ago

You seen any of Trump's tweets in the last couple months? It used to be all about China but now he talks about Europe and Canada like we're enemies because he feels like the whole world should only do what he wants.

shepherdjerred 6 hours ago

The current administration is not treating Europe as an ally. It’s pretty shameful.

But hopefully Europe becomes more independent. The US has become too unstable

_delibash_ 2 hours ago

Mostly because they are not allies. They are contractors on a leash.

tim333 5 hours ago

As with most things these days there seems to be a difference between the US as a whole which I guess still considers Europe and Canada allies, and President Trump who seems loyal to Putin and rather anti Canada and the EU.

stareatgoats 3 hours ago

Partly. As in any relationship, this is not a binary, it is a composite, and has ebbs and flows. Lately the relationship has had ebbs, and with a new administration we can expect flows, but from lower baseline than at least since WW2.

_delibash_ 2 hours ago

Europe is occupied by the US, so yeah.

OKRainbowKid 19 minutes ago

The leader of the US threatened invasion of Danish territory, as well as trade wars, and some of his allies openly support movements and parties deemed extremist in Europe. That's certainly how you would treat allies.

noah_buddy 2 hours ago

I don’t think that China need even consider Ukraine an adversary, but a stronger Russian state (or one more interested in its eastern flank) is not good for China. Ukraine is simply collateral damage.

thevillagechief 7 hours ago

Have you met China? They have no pretenses about being neutral or ethical. For them it's just business.

aurareturn 4 hours ago

As oppose to countries who pretend to be neutral or ethical but is also just business?

kingkawn 5 hours ago

Nobody cares about your moralizing. Not the US, not Europe, not Russia, not China, not anyone. You are making these assertions solely for your own satisfaction. I hope it is pleasurable enough to justify your dedication.

croes 4 hours ago

> If you supply both sides you're just a cynical war profiteer without a conscience.

That’s a kind of neutrality.

amelius 3 hours ago

Perhaps China just wants geopolitics to be more about business and less about fighting.

GolfPopper 3 hours ago

Krupp says, "Hallo!" (And so does Vickers.)

Betelbuddy an hour ago

>> China has been instrumental in keeping russia supplied and online for the duration of this war.

And now the US has joined them: https://apnews.com/article/trump-russia-diesel-midterms-12ba...

SSLy 2 hours ago

well then the IXes are next on the list :)

mejutoco 8 hours ago

Ukraine can have servers outside of Ukraine. No meed to have servers in the USA. I dont think these issues are so connected. As long as the servers are somewhere Russia does not dare to bomb.

af78 7 hours ago

Even some pro-russian war bloggers are critical of Putin's decision to start striking data centers:

3/ "This summer, faced with the inability to conclude a war that began nearly five years ago, Putin opted for a new round of escalation.

4/ "In June, the Russian Armed Forces began systematically targeting warehouses belonging to the Ukrainian company Nova Poshta, prompting a retaliatory strike on Wildberries warehouses; in September, strikes on Ukrainian data centres began, and a response followed swiftly.

5/ "In other words, one shouldn't assume that no one had thought to attack data centres before; it is simply that Putin decided to take this step right now.

6/ "This move effectively lifted the constraints that had previously bound Ukraine – a country that generally adheres to certain rules of engagement and, with few exceptions, does not initiate attacks on clearly civilian targets.

7/ "Ukraine had been prepared for this scenario almost from the very start of the war – and even before that. Even prior to the invasion, when it was clear to everyone that it was virtually inevitable, a law was passed allowing for the temporary storage of state registries abroad.

...

47/ "The issue is therefore extremely serious — far more so than the strikes on Wildberries, which result in economic damage but do not threaten the functioning of the state itself.

48/ "I believe Putin may have committed his second-biggest blunder since the invasion of Ukraine. He has literally started throwing stones inside a glass house without realizing how fragile that house is. The very system he built prevents him from grasping this;…

49/ …he makes decisions without consulting or listening to anyone, living in his own cozy bubble.

https://bsky.app/profile/chriso-wiki.bsky.social/post/3mxgts...

mejutoco 7 hours ago

My post was answering to this

> Given the geopolitical concerns from both the east and the west, this makes the question of whether Europe should move content off of US infrastructure a lot more complicated.

The argument is Europe can decide to move servers out of USA and Ukraine is fine because Ukraine does not need servers in USA. They need servers in other countries. That was the logic issue with OP.

Your post is completely unrelated to mine or the above. Maybe wrong thread

af78 6 hours ago

I don't think it's unrelated, the text I quoted says Ukraine mirrored some of its critical data abroad, something russia decided against. I don't disagree with your post, I was just expanding a bit on it.

mejutoco 3 hours ago

Look the post is interesting but one point out of 49 (elided) in a wall of text is only loosely related to the topic, not to my comment or the parent.

> the text I quoted says Ukraine mirrored some of its critical data abroad, something russia decided against

My only point was op was confusing Ukraine hosting abroad with hosting in the USA, and wrongly concluding this affects EU hosting in the USA from this. To this you contribute that Ukraine decided to host abroad and Russia did not.

So what? That is not bringing any new facts or argument to the conversation. But the bluesky account is interesting nonetheless.

wartywhoa23 5 hours ago

Well, if one at least entertains the idea that the whole putin's rule is totally against the interests of the country and the people, there's absolutely nothing illogical, strange or unexpected in any of his actions.

But sure, let me try that tinfoil hat on.

squidbeak 4 hours ago

Chris O is such a good researcher and source of information. His feeds have been essential reading the last 5 years.

sebzim4500 5 hours ago

Right but Russia is much more likely to bomb e.g. Poland/Germany than they are to bomb the US.

L3onard0 4 hours ago

Let's put servers in Australia

xethos 3 hours ago

And for today's example of "Developers don't understand latency", we have "Let's put servers far away from the majority of our customer base"

mejutoco 3 hours ago

The original topic was

> this makes the question of whether Europe should move content off of US infrastructure a lot more complicated.

Which was equating outside of Ukraine with USA, which is a logical error. Moving the goalposts does not invalidate the point. I have zero interest in discussing those probabilities (0 vs 0). The argument stands. This is hn

bah9 2 hours ago

Russia will most likely migrate/mirror to asian data centers. Is it bad or good for the west? I would say bad. China would become even stronger in a long term

jacquesm 2 hours ago

When it comes to paranoia putin has most people beat. I highly doubt the russian state would place any sensitive data in the hands of the Chinese.

reddalo 2 hours ago

Russia, on the other hand, would fall into irrelevance even more.

gloosx an hour ago

This very well illustrates an inherent property of distributed systems – resilience.

Turns out digital sovereignty is a bad idea in terms of state security.

Don't put all eggs into one basket they told ya!

regularfry 34 minutes ago

us-east-1 is all you need, surely.

EA-3167 18 minutes ago

Autarky is a genuine witless notion in all of its many expressions, but it’s evergreen in populist narratives.

jll29 an hour ago

This does not have to be an "either-or": you can be sovereign and still interoperate with others, while retaining your own infrastructre to fall back on or in parallel.

MiroslavPokorny an hour ago

China and America also care about digital sovereignty. Its hardly a shock that each of the big three, want to be in complete control of the core platforms. Each is an extension of the government policy.

bix6 7 hours ago

Well Trump did ask for less fuel targeting so he can give Putin handjobs I mean money so data centers seem like a good compromise!

Arodex 2 hours ago

And books.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/oct/04...

SubiculumCode 2 hours ago

Agreed. While Ukraine targets energy and technological/manufacturing enablers of war, Russia continues to indiscriminately bomb Ukrainian cities, apartment buildings being their favorite. Fck Russian Imperial asperations and their murderous invasion of Ukraine.

MiroslavPokorny an hour ago

Why would i be worried ?

defly 13 hours ago

If you want to help Ukraine, here is a list of the largest volunteer funds you can donate to:

Come Back Alive - delivered the first deep-strike drones https://savelife.in.ua/en/

Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation - bought the famous spy satellite https://prytulafoundation.org/en

KOLO Charity Foundation - run by the Ukrainian tech community https://www.koloua.com/en/

Razom - US-based foundation https://www.razomforukraine.org/donate/

Canada-Ukraine Foundation - Canadian NGO, organizes winter aid for civilians https://www.cufoundation.ca/

Ukrainian World Congress https://www.ukrainianworldcongress.org/

Exen - Polish volunteer who delivers used vehicles to the front https://pomagam.pl/4x4dlaukrainy

United24 - the government fund https://u24.gov.ua/

Blue/Yellow - Lithuanian NGO supplying the Ukrainian military https://blue-yellow.lt/en/

Stopify - Latvian initiative, donations collected via Ziedot.lv https://stopify.org.ua/

Weapons to Ukraine - Czech initiative https://weaponstoukraine.com/en

Help99 - from Estonia's LIFT99 startup hub, convoys refitted trucks and drones to the front https://www.help99.co/donate

Aktion Deutschland Hilft - German humanitarian aid https://www.aktion-deutschland-hilft.de/

Thanks to everyone who suggested additions. Please keep adding foundations from your country in the comments.

walrus01 13 hours ago

If I can add one, this Canadian NGO is also organizing winter aid efforts for Ukrainian civilians: https://www.cufoundation.ca/

And this group: https://www.ukrainianworldcongress.org/

defly 13 hours ago

Thank you, updated

rmind 13 hours ago

Blue Yellow - a Lithuanian NGO supplying the Ukrainian military: https://blue-yellow.lt/en/ (you can specify the purpose for which you are donating, e.g. drones)

Since the very start, they already raised over €121 million.

walterlw 13 hours ago

If in doubt - pick Come Back Alive. They have spotless reputation and invest into long-term projects such as military education and veteran sports/aid.

snapplebobapple 8 hours ago

Don't you want to target short term projects directly aimed at ending the russian threat first? Long term only matters if you make it there...

walterlw 7 hours ago

Come Back Alive was founded around 2014 and has operated continuously since. This is a conflict where long-term investments pay off. Also not saying they and others don't do short-term keep-up work - they do. But it's also important to develop education facilities and care for veterans.

blue_pants 7 hours ago

That's what people at most other foundation thought in 2022, yet here we're in 2026, and the war is still going.

And to be fair not all Come back alive projects are long term, they provide cars, cables, laptops, portable power stations etc., but these do not engage public enough, so their media team focuses on more interesting projects.

What "long term" means is also differs, they put a lot of effort into their training centers, but now the training cycle of one person is several months (I assume, I don't know exact terms), which is not that long.

blue_pants 7 hours ago

Yes, I think they are the best. They have strong expertise (for example they were commissioned to conduct studies by Ministry of Defense of Ukraine) and excellent accountability (some is public [0]).

In my eyes one of their highpoints which demonstrates their trustworthiness is the ~20 million dollars payment they received this year by undisclosed European (I think it was European) entity (government or private donors maybe)

[0] https://savelife.in.ua/en/reporting-en

olexsmir 6 hours ago

I think Taras Chmut(head of Come Back Alive) mentioned that they got a ~20 million donation from the undisclosed European governments

Marha01 13 hours ago

Thank you for posting this! I regularly donate through United24.

Also, Czech initiative https://weaponstoukraine.com/en and 69th Sniffing Brigade https://www.help99.co/donate is doing awesome work.

Glory to the Heroes!

krior 13 hours ago

Humanitarian aid initiative in Germany: https://www.aktion-deutschland-hilft.de/de/hilfseinsaetze/no...

cuu508 12 hours ago

Stopify - https://stopify.org.ua/ A charity initiative created by a group of communication specialists and supporters of Ukraine. Legally the donations are collected by a well-known and experienced charity organization, Ziedot.lv, based in Riga, Latvia. All funds go towards purchasing necessary supplies for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, based on their requests to the Embassy of Ukraine in Latvia.

uxhacker 8 hours ago

I have done a lot of work with KOLO Foundation - run by the Ukrainian tech community https://www.koloua.com/en/

Including KOLO dispersing medical equipment that I donated, and I can vouch that they are effective and very efficient.

regnull 5 hours ago

Razom is awesome. Donated to them for many years, went to their events. 100% recommended.

entropyneur 14 hours ago

Russia used to be quite advanced in information technology. At one point they prided themselves on being one of only four nations with Internet-scale search engines IIRC. Their little military operation already cost them lots of talent. And now they are actively losing infra too. Nice.

paaloeye 14 hours ago

Yep, most of talent has left

thih9 14 hours ago

Could you elaborate? What does this mean?

Edit: thanks for answers, this helps.

paaloeye 13 hours ago

Ones who didn't are asking stupid questions...

fartfeatures 13 hours ago

It means you shouldn't invade your neighbours and conscript your young people or you will ruin your economy.

rididjdj374 13 hours ago

just neighbours?

JumpCrisscross 13 hours ago

> just neighbours?

Within the narrow scope of this discussion, yes. Ukraine would have a harder time hitting data centers around Moscow if they didn’t share a land border.

pixelpoet 13 hours ago

Just neighbours, otherwise people might draw awkward comparisons to certain other warmongering nations.

JumpCrisscross 13 hours ago

> awkward comparisons to certain other warmongering nations

What Russia is doing in Ukraine is closer to America in Vietnam or Israel in Gaza than anything even Trump has done recently. And I doubt you’ll find many on this forum defending even the latter.

robbiep 13 hours ago

It’s reasonably close to the economic murder/suicide the US has caused with its rubbish crack at Iran

saidnooneever 11 hours ago

dont forget afghanistan, Iran Libya, Syria, etc etc. -_- none of these countries is doing well after their "liberation" or after their 'terrorists got bombed' or whatever wording (killed like dogs?) the current leader will have for it.

mschuster91 11 hours ago

> dont forget afghanistan, Iran Libya, Syria

Out of these four, at least Syria is better off. Everything, literally everything is better than what the Assad regime was. The gruesomeness of Assad and his regime is on a level not seen since 1945.

Afghanistan was an utter failure of all of Western societies. Yes, we provided a generation worth of women with access to schools. But we never provided a way for Afghanistan as a country to stand on its own feet, instead we looked away while one half of the military didn't exist on paper and the other half raped children for funsies (look up "bacha bazi").

Libya... now that is mostly upon us Europeans. Ghaddafi, I'm glad this prick is gone, but again we didn't do anything to meaningfully help Libya grow, and by the time Putin began supporting oppositional warlords, the game was lost.

And Iran... oh dear god what a mess, dating back to the history of the US using Kurds for their aims and then letting them to die without support. This entire shitshow was a disaster from start to finish, even if the idea was noble - the Mullahs slaughtered tens of thousands of protestors the start of this year, it would have been incredibly unethical to just stand aside again.

fn-mote 8 hours ago

> even if the idea was noble

The idea of nobly saving people is just “think of the children” on the nation-state level. It sounds great but gets used for every politician’s own ends.

mschuster91 5 hours ago

> The idea of nobly saving people is just “think of the children” on the nation-state level. It sounds great but gets used for every politician’s own ends.

Well, there's the saying every nerd should know, "with great power comes great responsibility". We have to be caretakers of those who cannot defend themselves, but all we care about is making money, and that ruins the mission from the start.

etc-hosts 5 hours ago

Feeling if Syria is better off really depends on what sect you are in. But the unhappy groups are being killed iff. Soon only the happy groups will remain.

lenkite 4 hours ago

> Everything, literally everything is better than what the Assad regime was. The gruesomeness of Assad and his regime is on a level not seen since 1945

Lolwut ? The Al-Qaeda head-chopper is in a distinct league of his own. He even had a US bounty on him before it was waived away. (US sponsored head-choppers are saintly you see)

He has already massacred thousands of civilians after he declared peace and took power last year. His presidency is Western appointed, not one elected. At the current rate of slaughter, within the next few years, he is going to make Assad like an innocent baby.

After a decade, he will be the next Osama bin Laden for commencing War on Terror 2.0 and his brand revamped into Evil #1 for upcoming generation of brainwashed US citizens.

saidnooneever 3 hours ago

syria is better off now in the sense that in Irak ppl also cheered for Sadam to go. There is yet to see what their future holds truly which in itself is an incredibly tedious place to be in as a civilian population.

these are still generations with much violence and suffering.

its hard to watch and for a long time even in academia etc. its been plain as day there are other approaches to bring people together than to force people together through violence, or to try and 'develop' places by forcing your own local developments on some remote peoples.

JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago

> Afghanistan was an utter failure of all of Western societies

Before it was Afghanistan, Khorasan was a century-long trap for the Arab armies in the 7th century.

If the last two millennia have like a single lesson, it’s don’t invade Afghanistan.

_delibash_ 2 hours ago

I'm willing to bet you haven't been to a single one of these countries.

JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago

> reasonably close to the economic murder/suicide the US has caused with its rubbish crack at Iran

If we continued for three years and put troops on the ground.

The bombing campaigns are similar. But it’s not quite comparable given we didn’t actually raze Iran’s power plants, we just threatened to.

To be clear, I’m making no moral argument here. Just a comparison of tactics.

Muromec 9 hours ago

Casualty count for entire Vietnam campaign for US is like two weeks at the current burndown rate for r-sia

tomrod 9 hours ago

Why are people avoiding spelling "Russia"?

wartywhoa23 5 hours ago

They are victims to the same propagandist brainwash that garbles the spelling of Ukraine, makes fun of the language and assigns asinine pejoratives to Ukrainians in Russian state-controlled media.

RobotCaleb 4 hours ago

I'm not really sure this answered the question

453yuh46 4 hours ago

Russians are avoiding to mention that Russia is at war(or military conflict, as officially it is still special operation) like this Muromec, as that is punishable offence in Russia. It is rather crazy situation as machine of repressions is escalating and requires more and more blood and it can only repress Russians, so they have to be cautious, in case they have commented anything wrong. It is interesting mindgame from afar as most people would think how to escape from that madness but you can't really help people that have imprisoned mind...

hkpack 7 hours ago

Only if you know nothing about it - then it is all the same.

JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago

> if you know nothing about it - then it is all the same

I made analogy. You collapsed three different situations to a singular “it”.

watwut 11 hours ago

But then again, American soldiers are not dying in that war the way Russian do. That would be different in war against neighbhood nation where you cant hide purely behind technology.

verelo 13 hours ago

I hope the MAGA folk threatening Canada take note.

gsky 12 hours ago

They invaded the whole world already. I hope Canda be prepared for the worst

pjc50 10 hours ago

The plan for Canada is clearly to buy enough Quislings to force a secession vote.

bix6 7 hours ago

TIL US gov is trying to make Alberta secede

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/30/are-trump-officials...

TitaRusell 12 hours ago

To be fair the nerds aren't sent to the front lines they get to work in a drone unit.

This war won't be over until the Russian army starts conscription in Moscow. The Czar will happily empty out the villages in Siberia and the Caucasus.

_menelaus 11 hours ago

Most young people with a conscience (which is most people that like to read) leave to avoid conscription in an unjust war.

MentalM 7 hours ago

> Most young people with a conscience (which is most people that like to read) leave

No. I am sure that most young people with a conscience remaining. And it is mostly people without a conscience who leaving.

Russia is an extremely poor country, and literally governed by mafia. So generally it is impossible to leave Russia if you are not in top 10% by wealth, and it is almost impossible in Russia to get in those top 10% if you have conscience.

tpm 4 hours ago

Russia is an extremely rich country, in natural resources and potential. But the governing class is worse than a mafia because mafia does not lead senseless wars outside of its territory while making their own (mafia) people worse off.

Your point is a good one but there are many people who left even when they couldn't really afford to and are stuck somewhere, but still won't return.

sazor 4 hours ago

Software engineering is (was) an affordable way to climb the social ladder. It is not impossible at all. SWE could have easily earn 5k+ USD which is enough to leave.

I'm not from an even remotely wealthy family, not a mafia and was able to move to the EU. Not exceptional by any means.

MentalM 2 hours ago

> earn 5k+ USD which is enough to leave

Quick search says that it is like 1.5k+ that get Russians in top 10%. How do you imagine leaving country with salary that way less then that, when there is practically no way for you to get job permit or asylum, and you will get yourself deported the second your travel visa expired?

> Software engineering is (was) an affordable way to climb the social ladder

But aren't those only supports my point? Among those 10% who has access to immigration, how many there are software engineers? And except them (and mafia members) who else can afford to move out of the Russia?

> I'm not from an even remotely wealthy family

5k+ USD Software Engineer salary in the Russia is literally top 2%. Sounds rather exceptional by me

sazor 2 hours ago

I'm not arguing that it's difficult for an average Russian. My point is that "conscience" or its absence has little to do with your ability to leave. You don't have to be "mafia" or some sort of hustler.

It's easier for some professions as they have more mobility and skills are transferable. But I've seen people from all sorts of backgrounds.

There are some folks involved into crypto/gambling/other questionable companies but I would say they're minority and rarely move to EU/UK/US because of regulations and taxes.

drdaeman 4 hours ago

I don’t know about my sense of right and wrong (some shit’s pretty fucked up in my head for sure), but back in the day, before the war, it was possible to work remotely for for foreign companies and earn good money without selling one’s soul to the devil.

When Crimea was annexed the writing on the wall was clear, so I made The Grind a priority, got fairly close to the top 10% (the real gap is corruption and having connections; net worth is something you have one day and lose the next one), and was able to leave with enough cash to keep me more than just afloat. And almost everyone I knew who was able to outsource their skills and wasn’t blind to what was happening, did the same thing: grind, save, move, settle down, live.

And then, when the war escalated into a whole different phase, I know some folks left Russia with a lot less than what I had - not piss poor but nowhere close to the top 10%. They had it a lot rougher, but the danger to their wellbeing and lives was more immediate. So I know you’re wrong about wealth being a requirement for leaving - it’s a huge boon that makes it a lot easier, but it’s certainly not a hard requirement.

siva7 10 hours ago

They may or may not. I wouldn't like to take on this bet.

badpun 8 hours ago

Drone units require good eyesight, reflexes, spatial orientation etc. FPS gamers are the best match, not coders.

search_facility 7 hours ago

Drone units of occupation forces of Russia are primary taegets for AFU and due limited control distance for FPVs, Russian drone units are serving at the zero line, actually. So they are sent to actual front lines constantly (despite what Russia officially claims)

MentalM 7 hours ago

But it means exactly the opposite. For some reason everybody thinks that for people (or even for only one man) who make decisions, Russian economy, talented people, and datacenters has great value or something.

But the only thing that matters is to remain in power. And invading your neighbors country have get those people exactly that.

retinaros 3 hours ago

it worked well for USA and many other nations tho

nikanj 37 minutes ago

The Russian economy is absolutely ruined. The US economy is stronger than ever. For the average peasant, life is unbearably expensive in both.

IsTom 13 hours ago

A lot of people who could get out of Russia after the war started, did get out.

lifestyleguru 13 hours ago

Sadly, this applies also to Ukraine. No one in their right mind will risk their limbs for clique of oligarchs and mini-oligarchs. Coincidentally children of oligarchs and mini-oligarchs left both countries as well. They basically wiped out their male millenial generation entirely, as this demographics had it the most difficult to leave these countries.

JumpCrisscross 13 hours ago

> this applies also to Ukraine

It certainly does not. There is a huge and growing [1] (albeit still below ‘22 peak) tech outsourcing industry there.

Plus, likely Europe’s most advanced defense-industrial base for drones and, increasingly, missiles of all kinds. Being on the right side of a war works wonders for morale.

[1] https://itcluster.lviv.ua/en/gradual-market-stabilization-wh...

air3y 8 hours ago

> It certainly does not.

Ukraine's estimated population in 2022 was around 40 million. Various numbers provided by UN officials to Ukrainian govt officials have at various times put Ukrainian population (in govt controlled areas) at 35 million [1], 32 million [2], 22-25 million [3]. This with adult men being actively blocked from leaving Ukraine.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-russia-war-ukrainian-po... [2] https://kyivindependent.com/200-000-500-000-men-could-leave-... [3] https://www.novinite.com/articles/238511/The+Uncomfortable+T...

NicoJuicy 5 hours ago

Many Ukrainians ( including men) are living in Europe.

453yuh46 3 hours ago

There are estimations that puts Russian population to 80 millions only. Probably population in Russia is slightly above that, but there is undeniable Russian migration out of country, that is not appearing in statistics with bias selection for smart young people(estimates that I've read couple of years ago put that Russian migration to 4 million) - which is nowhere comparable to Ukrainian situation, as these Russians are unable to make western companies to cooperate with Russia, or even return to Russia unlike what Ukrainians can do.

To be fair, I have never understood this obsession with Ukrainian numbers as some kind of proof that Ukraine is doomed. There are people that have sent their families abroad and returned to Ukraine to fight Russia. There are certainly also ethnic Russians that do not want to help Ukraine in this war, but on other side they do not want to join Russia either, as they would be sent to die for sure. Many reasons for many people what they do and why.

During WW1 my home country lost 50% of population, as many people escaped frontline - most of them returned and rebuilt everything.

I am very sure that Ukrainians after war will rebuild Ukraine - probably that will be another European center competing with Germany - unlike Russians, that are abroad now as they won't rebuild Russia - as Russia very surely will collapse. What would be built in the place of Russia is rather hard to tell right now, but I do not think that many Russians will want to return to that where they would be out of place in those new countries, just like they are out of place in modern Russia.

lifestyleguru 3 hours ago

I highly appreciate your fierce enthusiasm but nobody will come back to the ruined countries. No one below at least regional level oligarchy. The oligarchy will only consolidate and strengthen. They will bring in new people to replace the former native population, don't worry. Nationalism was only a poison intended for the (former) native population, its job is done. Russia will survive, Ukraine maybe will. Poland is not even at war and follows the same pattern - emigrants replaced by imported population, skyrocketing wealth inequalities.

walterlw 13 hours ago

I work for a Ukrainian product firm and interviewed around 50 people in the last quarter for in-office work. Some of them are migrants discouraged by european salaries where an entry-level IT professional can make as much as a waiter.

Muromec 13 hours ago

You can't really leave Ukraine (legally*) right now if you are in the conscriptable demographics (M 18-60), unless you have good reasons.

lifestyleguru 13 hours ago

Just after they gave nepo babies below age 26 enough time to leave the country.

simondotau 10 hours ago

Having spoiled nepo babies on the front lines might be good in principle but probably more trouble than it’s worth in practice.

lifestyleguru 9 hours ago

This war should be fought on all sides between oligarchs and their nepo babies exclusively.

simondotau 9 hours ago

If we’re imagining what should happen, maybe imagine no war at all. Until then, practical reality matters more than class resentment, however justified.

bpavuk 13 hours ago

oh you can if you are younger than 23 and not in education. this exception initially started as "academic mobility" program - you had to somehow prove your intent to study before going abroad, I don't remember how - but then both govt and citizens realized that it's too much paperwork and impossible to organize properly, so the exception was generalized.

yeah, hating papers is our national trait at this point, given Diia and stuff XD

carstenhag 13 hours ago

Why would "right now" matter if the war has been ongoing for 4.5 years? I live in Germany, many ukrainians moved here, had several coworkers and their families move.

453yuh46 4 hours ago

You are ignoring oligarch children that actually are fighting and not to mention that Azov batallion was oligarch creation to defend their country

crazybonkersai 11 hours ago

Majority has come back though after realization that the West does not really welcome Russians with open arms.

fn-mote 8 hours ago

Wtf… definitely not. Russian shill account exposed.

enaaem 2 hours ago

Lol, 100% of the people I know have not returned and are not planning.

TrickyRick 13 hours ago

That anyone with a few brain cells and enough rubels has left the country

lifestyleguru 13 hours ago

Cyprus, Georgia, UAE

_nalply 13 hours ago

There were several waves of Russians fleeing [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_emigration_during_the_...

(This is incomplete, I think there is a fourth or a fifth wave, probably since about summer 2026.)

throwaway3060 8 hours ago

To add a bit, the brain drain has been going on since at least the end of the Soviet Union. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-wave_Russian_emigration

The Soviet Union arguably had some of world's finest engineering talent, but many of those most skilled left as soon as they could. Some of these, or their children, would go on to found startups.

yubblegum 6 hours ago

> The Soviet Union arguably had some of world's finest engineering talent, but many of those [..]

.. were not Russians. USSR itself incorporated besides its native Russian talent 2 talent powerhouses of Ukraine and Armenia. Ukraine was the industrial powerhouse. Armenia was the USSR's silicon valley with hightest per capita of scientists in USSR. There is also Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to consider, all of them active in relative high tech engineering.

throwaway3060 6 hours ago

All of those also had some amount of brain drain around that time.

wereHamster 13 hours ago

I was in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan not too long ago (both countries just to the south of Russia, for those not savvy of geography). Met plenty of young russians who moved there recently. I didn't have to ask why. Many of them used to work in the tech sector, it's easy for them to find new work.

khalera 11 hours ago

I am a top Russian CS degree alumna (HSE). I left Russia even before the war, but now most of my uni peers live and work abroad (US, EU, UK, Serbia, Armenia, Georgia, etc.). It is similar for the alumni of the other top universities there. And we made the right choice, both ethically and financially/career-wise, imo.

jacquesm 9 hours ago

Thank you.

dvfjsdhgfv 8 hours ago

> And we made the right choice, both ethically

FWIW, thank you for making this choice.

kakacik 6 hours ago

Big respect to each of you, its never easy to move away. Talk is cheap, 10x moreso on internet. Actions define a man / woman and their legacy and self worth.

macleginn 4 hours ago

You made the right choice, but importantly, this is a single generation of uni graduates. Each subsequent generation finds it harder to leave, and even if all who would could, there will still be enough human capital for the war effort and then some. For comparison, brain drain is even stronger in Israel, proportionally.

mimischi 3 hours ago

> both ethically and financially/career-wise, imo.

And, most importantly, you weren’t sent to the slaughterhouse and are still alive, thanks to your choice.

barrenko 13 hours ago

Among them also Dan Abramov I think.

cromka 12 hours ago

Yeah but I assume vast majority simply works from remote for the same companies they did?

uhx 12 hours ago

Russian payment systems are barely supported in the other world, so its kinda hard to work remotely and get paid in roubles

cromka 11 hours ago

Fair point, but there are loopholes and IT people know how to use them. There was a YT video on the subject, iirc.

khalera 9 hours ago

I know a couple of people who do that, but unless you settled in a really cheap country (for Russians that would likely be Armenia or Kazakhstan), you would really struggle to make ends meet with a Russian salary. And IT-folks who are used to luxury in Russia do not like that :) Also in countries with structured laws for social security, residence permits, pensions etc., you will most likely be caught for doing shady things (not paying local taxes or not paying social contributions). And if you do pay them, you are even more financially screwed. E.g. in Germany an employed person who is not supported by a local employer in paying social security would give away well over a half of their salary. So… either you REALLY live a shady life / life in a “developing” country with no tax control or you have to integrate and find a local / unsanctioned job. Maybe not right away, but it has been >4 years, most people have done this already. There are really little incentives to stay employed in Russia. Of course, there are companies who moved themselves (ex-Yandex parts, Jetbrains, etc). But they are now registered / taxed / employing elsewhere. Even if operating partially in Russian language.

tumdum_ 11 hours ago

The talent has left but have you seen mass protests against Russian aggression in EU/US by those who left? I haven’t. And this is a big difference to the behaviour or Belarusians who fled - they are often seen across EU protesting against Lukashenko.

So the talent has left, but not because they disagree with Putin actions.

bluealienpie 11 hours ago

And do most Americans who leave the US condemn American soldiers for murdering a million Iraqis and continuing to colonize their country? At a certain point just not engaging in these pointless wars should be enough.

dylan604 8 hours ago

Most are probably too busy dissing the health care situation

CaptWorld 4 hours ago

What millions bro? It's arabs killing each other that raised the death count. You guys are brain broken

khalera 11 hours ago

Are you kidding? E.g. in Berlin there are major protests every couple of months. They are not destructive (why would we destroy Germany‘s infra and police?), so maybe you do not hear about them as much. But they are quite numerous and regular. Ideally they should be in Russia AND destructive, but most normal people fled, yes.

dysleixc 11 hours ago

I have?

> On the first anniversary of the invasion, rallies took place in the main cities where Russian exiles settled, including Tbilisi, Vilnius, Berlin, Barcelona, Paris and London, with turnout in the hundreds. In Yerevan, protesters burned a picture of Putin.

> In November 2024, at least a thousand people marched through central Berlin behind Navalnaya, Yashin and Kara-Murza, with parallel rallies in cities including Prague, Vilnius, Yerevan, Lisbon and San Francisco.

> Another Berlin march followed in 2025, after the third anniversary of the full-scale invasion.

And not just EU/US but moreso in other countries, where the migration wave was much bigger, eg Georgia and Armenia; after those protests many Russians were banned from entering Georgia after a visa run, yet others continued protesting anyway. Just google it for christ sake?

Also to me, as a Russian immigrant, protesting from another country doesn't make a lot of sense.

Anyway, at this point your comments in this thread are pure ragebait and not worth spending time replying to.

jacquesm 9 hours ago

Thank you. Getting out is one of the strongest forms of protest. At the same time, you likely still have family there and that alone would be a good reason to be careful. Even so, there are plenty of Russians abroad that still carry water for putin and those are despicable, more so because they clearly have access to all the information they could want and from their comfy new lives they call for more suffering for others.

NicoJuicy 5 hours ago

> Also to me, as a Russian immigrant, protesting from another country doesn't make a lot of sense.

Thought the same.

dylan604 8 hours ago

Does the fear of being poisoned have an affect on Russian ex-pats from being very vocal?

MentalM 6 hours ago

> have you seen mass protests against Russian aggression in EU/US by those who left?

What are you talking about? Just look at the amount of humanitarian visas getting by Russians. We like literally talking about hundreds per country on average (not hundreds of thousands, HUNDREDS). So participation in mass protests is like the fastest way to be deported back in Russia and get 8 years in jail.

tumdum_ 4 hours ago

EU is not deporting anyone for peaceful protests in front of Russian embassies or consulates.

MentalM 3 hours ago

Are you kidding or what?

EU is doing exactly that by denying humanitarian visas. Just look at absolute numbers of such visas.

For 90 percent of refugees from Russia if you participate in totally peaceful protest in front of Russian embassies, you will get yourself arrested, immediately deported, and will go straight to Russian jail for 10 years.

I did a quick search and what we get in example of Finland:

(https://meduza.io/en/news/2026/08/24/finland-has-deported-15...)

- 1k+ km land border with forests

- tens of thousands Russian survivors hunted by Putin crossing it

- only 186 per year granted asylum

- for everybody else any contacts with Finnish officials = deportation and jail

I think it is rather dangerous to peacefully protest in front of Russian embassies when near those embassies a lot of agents deployed to hunt Russians down and hand them down to Putin.

ttkari 2 hours ago

Strangely, the article you quoted does not mention those "tens of thousands russian survivors" applying for asylum in Finland (as only hundreds do each year). Are you sure you got your numbers right?

rajnathani 13 hours ago

Out of curiosity, which was the 4th nation besides the US and China?

bpavuk 13 hours ago

I guess it's France with its Qwant engine. decent for coding and French (culture, language, or both) queries. didn't use it for much else tho

gregw134 4 hours ago

It's yet another Bing white label

entropyneur 13 hours ago

Czechia, quite surprisingly. But that was some time ago now, there are probably more these days (and might have been even then, I think my source is a Yandex speaker at a conference)

Squarex 3 hours ago

Yes, it's Seznam.cz

risyachka 11 hours ago

>> Russia used to be quite advanced in information technology

it really never was. apart from a few one-off examples they have nothing if interest and quality.

crazybonkersai 11 hours ago

Yandex, Kaspersky, Telegram, Intellij (including Kotlin), Nginx, VK to name a few. All those are coming from Russia.

risyachka 10 hours ago

yes they can clone western companies.

very valuable, very high tech.

for nginx/intelij - you can find a few good examples in any country on earth.

does not make the country good in tech.

etc-hosts 5 hours ago

Yandex precedes Google.

NicoJuicy 5 hours ago

Yandex is now Nebius. It's a lot in the news with AI.

The Yandex that stayed in Russia is a ghost of the past.

etc-hosts 4 hours ago

I did not realize Nebius is what Yandex was. Thanks.

machomaster an hour ago

They divided the old Yandex into the Russian Yandex and the Western/international Yamdex (Nebius). Cut ties, different owners, etc.

mattlondon 2 hours ago

Google was not the first western search engine.

jwr 4 hours ago

The problem is Russia still has enough talent willing to work and develop advanced weaponry like drones and their software.

Svoka an hour ago

poor russia[ns], lost so much because of all the genocide they're doing.

elimgta 14 hours ago

Great! More news like this

Maybe this would remind ordinary russians that killing innocent civilians every day in Kyiv is not good

KingOfCoders 14 hours ago

40.000 - 100.000 dead civilians.

Estimate range is big because lots of civilians died in cities that ended up occupied.

schleck8 14 hours ago

What is this number referring to? When I google it I only find chechen war, gaza, and US gun deaths annually

KingOfCoders 14 hours ago

The number is referring to the post I replied to:

"innocent civilians every day in Kyiv is not good".

Estimations for how many civilians Russians killed in Chechnya range from 45,000 to 80,000.

debugnik 14 hours ago

They were asking for a reference/source, not to be treated like an idiot.

KingOfCoders 14 hours ago

"What is this number referring to?"

Does not sound like looking for a source, but I'm not a native speaker.

IshKebab 13 hours ago

I am. You are correct.

jazzyjackson 14 hours ago

I suppose they’re mixing up deaths with injuries

  From the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 to December 2025, 14,999 Ukrainian civilians were killed and 40,601 injured, according to the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU).

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2026/country-chapters/ukrai...

troupo 14 hours ago

It's likely much higher considering the completely destroyed cities and towns. E.g. Mariupol had a population of 450 000 before the war.

KingOfCoders 14 hours ago

1) The invasion started at least in 2014 (you could argue before that)

2) The UN estimate is considered on the low end because it looks into confirmed deaths while many civilians were killed in cities that became occupied and we have no numbers from there.

beernet 13 hours ago

> And of course not a word about the people in Russia killed by Ukranians (Kursk region and daily killings by drones, of civilians, which the west is "not aware of").

Russia could stop this invasion any time and not a single Russian would be hurt. Pure Kreml propaganda on HN, how sad.

testaccount28 13 hours ago

i mean, presumably so could ukraine?

masfuerte 13 hours ago

If Ukraine ceased military activity, why do you think Russia wouldn't continue their invasion?

KingOfCoders 13 hours ago

How could Ukraine stop the Russian invasion?

cduzz 6 hours ago

Ukraine can stop the war at any time by committing mass suicide. They're just being selfish.

cluckindan 13 hours ago

Yes, capitulate to the attacker. Cease to exist as a country, nation, people, culture. Presumably that is an option!

walterlw 13 hours ago

and be overrun by soldiers who kill civilians with drones, rape and pillage? No thanks

Lio 9 hours ago

Where Russia was forced out of Ukraine they left behind mass civilian graves. Bodies found with hands tied behind their backs, shot in the back of the head.

Surrendering to Russia does not bring peace to Ukraine only more suffering.

They have to fight on, Russia does not.

Stitch4223 12 hours ago

I’m not able to find this citation in the human rights watch link you reply to, nor elsewhere on this page nor the Yandex page.

Are we looking at the same thing? Was it deleted somewhere?

crabbone 13 hours ago

The highest, by far, death numbers come from Mariupol. It's a city close to the Russian border that was attacked very early in the war, but didn't surrender quickly like most other cities in the South. The estimates are somewhere close to 25K dead in this city alone. Civilians were unable to evacuate, and it was the time when Russia had plenty of resources, especially artillery munitions to expend and their tactics were to do massive artillery bombardment (often with rocket artillery) before massive motorized assault. So, lack of precision, or as some jokingly call it "accuracy through saturation".

Since Mariupol fell to Russia, they never counted the dead. There are horror stories of the bodies not being buried for month after surrender, and in some cases, Russians simply pawed over the places with many dead (a prominent example is the theater in the city center, but there were more).

The numbers you are quoting are the "counted" ones. Mariupol, Sieverodonetsk, Kherson, saw a lot of deaths that were never counted.

Sorry to bring another conflict into the picture, but it's useful to illustrate the point. In Gaza, the "health ministry" used a different "technique" to count the dead. Normally, to establish that someone died, there has to be a qualified medical professional at the scene, they also have to get a hold of identifying documents (or else, they will be counted as "John/Jane Doe", but in the morgue, much later). In some "special" cases a non-medical professional may record a death (they are usually defined using the language like "the head is more than 50 cm away from the rest of the body" etc.) But they switched to "incorporating reports from the news sources" (i.e. if some newspaper reported X people killed in some event, they just added X to the tally).

After the front line stabilized in Ukraine, they had no reason (or excuse) to count their civilian casualties in the way Gaza administration did, so, they never incorporated those who were never properly reported. And that's why we have a relatively "low" numbers. If Ukraine is ever able to regain control of the territory captured after 2022, these numbers are bound to go much, much higher, as they will have to deal with eg. property ownership and would have to either declare the previous owners as deceased, or actually find them.

squidbeak 13 hours ago

Mariupol's civilian casualties are hard to establish. Some of the upper estimates [1] run to 100,000 killed. Over just a couple of months.

[1] https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/10/06/i-m-used-to-walking-...

ferroman 7 hours ago

Much more. It was around 60k in Mariupol alone.

raverbashing 14 hours ago

Also helps with removing bots from X (to much of Elon's disagreement)

enaaem 13 hours ago

I remember that during the Wagner rebellion there was a 24h-48h time frame of no Russian bot activities. Was kinda surreal.

TheOtherHobbes 13 hours ago

Prigozhin was one of Putin's chief botmasters. He helped set up the Internet Research Agency, which was one of Russia's biggest troll farms.

nomilk 12 hours ago

> remind ordinary Russians

Ordinary Russians think the war's bad too. Only difference is you and I can say that without getting 15 years in a (very harsh) prison.

rcMgD2BwE72F 12 hours ago

Are they physically forced to vote for Putin? And how widespread is the electoral fraud?

nomilk 12 hours ago

This is informative https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/27658/25206

tl;dr Other parties are Putin-like, and if/when a genuine alternative emerges, Putin deals with them ruthlessly. Example: Navalny was the charismatic leader of a small but popular rival party with anti-corruption policies. He was initially delegitimised (not allowed to partake in the 2018 elections due to [likely fake] charges of embezzlement), then poisoned (nearly died), then imprisoned, and then killed while in prison.

Consider the terrifying message that sends to would-be political rivals...

RuslanL 8 hours ago

Well, some decades ago if you were a school teacher, you were _asked_ to (1) vote "right" yourself (2) call all parents and ask them to vote "right". If you disobeyed, the school got problems and you got problems. Maybe not enough to make all people comply, but sufficient to get the right outcomes. Same goes for all government-funded workers.

Since then I think they simplified the system and just forge the results outright.

stratos123 8 hours ago

Before the latest Russian election one of the parties opposed the war in Ukraine and was a bit too popular, so, well, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yabloko :

  Yabloko is the sole officially registered party to openly oppose the Russian war in Ukraine, openly calling "for peace and freedom". The party planned to partake in the 2026 Russian legislative election under their anti-war slogan.[29][30] However, in August 2026, the party was barred from running by the Supreme Court of Russia due to a lawsuit by Rodina.

Also, several politicians associated with it were imprisoned, e.g. this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Shlosberg

wartywhoa23 4 hours ago

As to the widespreadness of the electoral fraud, it should suffice to know that Ela Pamfilova, the irremovable head of the Russian election circus, has recently proclaimed all video evidence of any fraud to be AI generated, and demonstrated a video where a casually-looking man throws a stack of doctored bulletins in, followed by several outright fictional characters.

kpil 11 hours ago

I'm not totally sure about that.

Maybe Russians outside Russia.

Of course almost everyone thinks war is bad, but many seem to think it's justified - different thing.

There seem to be a wide support for the idea that Russia is threatened (economically and to an extent military) by the global West, and also that Ukraine is not entitled to be independent and also many of the official lies about the background.

Good lies have a nugget of truth in them, and this is the case also here.

Russia's economy is not growing (compared to EU, US), fertility rate is down, the revolution in Ukraine undermines the stability of the Russian regime, the attempted coup in Belarus was also a threat, NATO is arguably expanding - lately as a reaction to the war but nonetheless, EU is expanding into post-Soviet states both offering membership but also trade agreements which undercut Russia's ambition to be an economical hub in the region, etc.

nomilk 11 hours ago

Often, both are true. It's perfectly legitimate for anyone (Russian or otherwise) to have geo-political concerns (e.g. NATO expansion, Cuban missile crisis etc), but a Russian concerned about NATO expansion may also be very opposed to the extreme option of war as a solution.

War affects an ordinary Russian in very negative ways: the possibility of conscription (w/ risk of injury/death), complications for travel, sanctions on goods and services, and the economic opportunity cost (money wasted on war that could have gone to productive uses, plus reduced economic output due to drone strikes on yandex, wildberries, refineries).

killerstorm 10 hours ago

Russia could fully integrate into EU/NATO if it really wanted.

That's just not compatible with ambitions of its corrupt leaders who want to be a root-level player, not "one of NATO countries". And I'm not sure how legitimate is prioritization of wants of corrupt leaders over well-being of your compatriots.

jacquesm 9 hours ago

Unsurprisingly, the same motivates the current crop of leadership in the US. They stopped teaching history in school I guess.

RuslanL 8 hours ago

They have asked to be a part of nato twice around 2000th and were both times rejected.

killerstorm 8 hours ago

NATO is not something you can just apply to on a whim. The path for a membership was there: e.g. there were some joint exercises, etc. Obviously they also need political integration as well.

Russia actually have been a member of Council of Europe (PACE, etc.) since 1996 but it was expelled in 2022. If they had a good record in Council of Europe they could really go for NATO membership eventually.

RuslanL 8 hours ago

Ok, about the path you describe: how can one join a military exercise without a prior green light for that? And speaking about the political integration: remember that Turkey is in nato, so it does not need more political integration than Russia had in early 2000th.

What happened is that nato realized that if Russia joins, it will loose the reason to exist (i.e. if the old enemy joins the alliance what is the need for such an alliance anymore?)

So nato bureaucrats understood that they will loose well-paying positions and rejected even initial talks.

killerstorm 6 hours ago

I think you misunderstood me, Russia _was_ on a path towards NATO in 90s to mid-2000s. There was cooperation, joint exercises, etc.

E.g. from a conversation between Clinton and Putin in 2000:

> Clinton: I am serious about being ready to discuss NATO membership with Russia. I recognize that domestic considerations inside Russia will prevent this for now, but over time Russia should be a part of every organization that holds the civilized world together.

> Putin: But I'll let you know that when I was asked about possible membership for Russia in NATO, I supported the idea.

Regarding "reason to exist", there's always a concern about Middle-East, China, etc.

Funny enough that you remember it was as "Russia applied but was rejected" but from this talk it's clear Putin is much less interested in Russia joining NATO than Clinton.

You can find full text here: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/33393-document-3-memorand...

453yuh46 3 hours ago

Never ever that was a thing. There has never been any applications to have Russia as NATO member. What Putin was referring and had in mind was not exactly NATO membership but special treatment to Russia, that would allow using benefits of NATO, by not submitting to anything.

formvoltron 9 hours ago

imagine if Putin had said... we are slipping behind the west. They are threatening us. So... we'll double down on research & education. We'll outthink them. We'll shift our economy into an economy that thrives in the future.

SEJeff 8 hours ago

Pretty much precisely what the US did during the Cold War. To do so, we had to outspend the Soviets, and by a LOT. But the world buying US treasury bonds was basically a credit card for us to finance the above things that result into the world’s strongest military.

xtracto 8 hours ago

It's like Americans thinking thar what their president is doing is right. Nobody in there is doing anything to stop it.

dylan604 8 hours ago

Let's hold this comment until after the mid-terms. The biggest thing Americans can do to stop Trump's war mongering would be at the ballot box. Protesting is one thing, but actively voting in people with power to stop POTUS would be the most direct action they can take.

shepherdjerred 5 hours ago

The majority of people don’t really care about the world, their country, etc.

They just care that they have what they need, that they don’t struggle too much in life.

In the US people will vote for whoever will make their life easier. To some degree there is morality/ethics/ideology but that’s usually grounded in something that effects you day-to-day

Examples from republicans: Keep out the immigrants or you won’t have a job. You don’t want trans people in the bathroom with your kid. Democrats are socialists which is morally repugnant (and will raise your taxes!)

From dems: republicans are trying to control women (reproductive rights), republicans will cut social programs, etc.

Nobody _really_ cares about wars in Iran, Ukraine, Gaza, etc aside from it effecting them at home.

(Really caring would involve donating, protesting, volunteering, etc — plenty of people talk/have opinions)

MentalM 6 hours ago

> but many seem to think it's justified - different thing

Literally no one thinks that. Look at the last election in Russia.

There were like 10 pro-Putin pro-war parties and one pro-Putin maybe-we-a-lil-bit-try-to-stop-the-war joke party. And that last party was banned from participating because of copyright infringement (they used fonts from Microsoft).

falserum an hour ago

That indicates that actions were taken to usurp absolute power, not that there is 0% support.

People there, from young age live with constant repetition of same soviet style messaging: “west is conniving and bad (and don’t forget - rotten); we won WW2; USSR was best in the world at X, Y, Z; Kiev Rus Vikings; inheritors of eastern Rome something…”.

Those messages are indistinguishable part of national (almost personal) pride, even for a lot of russian speaking people that currently live outside of Russia.

(If I would be raised in muslim family, I would be muslim; if I would be raised in russian info space, most likely I would support 3day operation to save Russian people from fashists)

tim333 5 hours ago

I think a lot of Russians are misinformed as to what's been going on due to deliberate misinformation and propaganda from the Russian government.

SubiculumCode 2 hours ago

Conscripts didn't typically come from the lands around Moscow, but from the poor peoples who are very far away from wealth and power. For most there, it was only Ukraine's drone attacks that made them feel at war

_delibash_ an hour ago

You seem to think it's justified.

killerstorm 11 hours ago

Ordinary Russians think "yeah war sucks, I wish Ukraine surrenders so peace can be restored". I'm afraid only a tiny minority believes Russia needs to surrender.

conmod278 10 hours ago

When the pager attack happened, there was a implicity sentiment on focusing on the technical details and not focus on politics. But I didn't see the same sentiment when Iran ballistic missles did their job.

preisschild 9 hours ago

Irans BMs primarily targeted cities, the pager attacks resulted in a lot less civilian casualties

brabel 10 hours ago

Does anyone really believe Russia will eventually just surrender and leave? I can’t imagine the rationale to believe that. When Putin leaves all indications are that the next leader will actually be much more hawkish. They will only leave if someone bombs them to death. Which is quite a dangerous thing to do. Ukraine is pushing the limits, and everyone knows it’s with the help of many EU countries. I wonder what it will take for Russia to reach desperate measures in this war.

killerstorm 10 hours ago

I see no reason why they can't agree on a truce: Russia haven't gained any meaningful ground for a while. A truce or even a peace treaty would be strictly beneficial to Russia.

ivan_gammel 9 hours ago

Any outcome short of surrender of Ukraine is an enormous headache for Putin that will likely cost him and his system dearly. They simply cannot, or they will be dead. Why? Because a million of veterans coming back and telling the stories will ask this question: „Why?“ The „Nazis“ are still in Kiev, the NATO is coming, what we got is just thousands of kilometers of ruins, what for was that? The war keeps them busy, for now. The situation is worse for Ukraine than for Russia, so it may feel like they can go on and actually win.

The same can be actually said about Zelensky, for whom any concessions to Russia mean political death too. If Ukraine loses territories forever, people will ask, why so many had to die for that. What was the plan. And blaming the West (which won‘t be 100% justified) will not help. And he may feel that now he is applying good pressure too, with those drone strikes and knocked out refineries.

hkpack 7 hours ago

> The same can be actually said about Zelensky, for whom any concessions to Russia mean political death too. If Ukraine loses territories forever, people will ask, why so many had to die for that.

That is actually not true at all. People in Ukraine know that it is not about territory but about sovereignty.

The problem of giving up territory is that you will run out of it. The goal of Ukraine is to survive as an independent state, not to hold the ground.

ivan_gammel 2 hours ago

Do they know it or do they believe in it? There‘s big difference between faith and rational analysis.

wartywhoa23 4 hours ago

And then just push that (totally correct) line of thought a notch further to the conclusion that it's a long pre-planned, mutually agreed on (though I don't think there can be any disagreement in that club) operation to pull the people of both countries into the chaos in which they become apathetic, scared and subdued into the new world order developments like CBDC, total control and surveillance, while also getting rid of all revolt potential (read able men who are currently being slaughtered in the meatgrinder).

453yuh46 3 hours ago

>>>The same can be actually said about Zelensky, for whom any concessions to Russia mean political death too. If Ukraine loses territories forever, people will ask, why so many had to die for that.

There is wrong assumption here that Russia wants only those territories and not whole Ukraine. Also, the Ultimatum was sent to NATO, when Putin invaded Ukraine... and it includes aim to use force against half of Europe and justifications to use it against other half as well. Also, just like it was with Hitler, allowing him to swallow those territories did not prevent WW2... that was also in plans of Stalin to use Hitler as puppet.

So, the maximum of Russian gamble is to take over most of Europe and given that he also threatened Macron, Putin does not see Russia equivalent in power to anyone in Europe but only USA. He is that stupid - he thinks, that anyone should bow to him, because he has 4000 nukes.

kolinko 9 hours ago

They left Afghanistan. Also, Imdon’t see Ukraine giving up any time soon either.

simondotau 9 hours ago

Russia have been taking desperate measures for years. The only thing they haven’t done is use nukes, which Russia can’t use without consequences that vastly outweigh the benefits.

graeme 3 hours ago

>Does anyone really believe Russia will eventually just surrender and leave?

With internal turmoil, yes. To maintain the lines in Ukraine Russia needs to constantly send in troops and materiel.

Eventually Russia may decide not to do so. And then there is no magic "pause the frontlines" button if they do.

There is plenty of precedent for this in Russian history too. The Russian Revolution collapsed the frontlines in WWI. The Soviet Empire collapsed with the fall of communism and concomitant internal turmoil.

Russian propaganda puts a lot effort into treating Russia as some sort of force of nature that cannot be deterred or reasoned with, that will advance and hold Ukraine at all costs.

It isn't true. They're humans like the rest of us, not a natural, unstoppable force.

453yuh46 3 hours ago

Death of Putin seems to be the main event that defines eventuality.

>>>I wonder what it will take for Russia to reach desperate measures in this war.

I think, that NATO countries for sure are allowing that to happen, but on other hand... I do want to have some changes.

Lio 9 hours ago

It’s worth pointing out that Russia doesn’t need to “surrender” to stop the war. It just needs to withdraw.

That’s not surrender because Russia started this invasion without provocation. It wasn’t under attack and Ukraine hadn’t joined NATO.

Russia had no reason to invade except as a show of force.

If Putin suddenly declared he’d met his objectives and withdrew who’s to say otherwise?

throwaway902984 7 hours ago

> who’s to say otherwise?

There is a lot of discussion about veterans and moscovites saying otherwise, but I wonder how loud their collective voices are to the Kremlin. From the outside, I have a dim view of that.

moffkalast 4 hours ago

Could just send them for 15 years in a very harsh prison if they say otherwise, if that's what they already do for anti-war speak anyway?

453yuh46 3 hours ago

That is considered as surrender.

>>>If Putin suddenly declared he’d met his objectives and withdrew who’s to say otherwise?

Ahem, some facts: 1. Putin is representation of "collective Russian" mind 2. Collective Russians at this moment believe that they are winning the war. 3. Any withdrawing would be interpreted as betrayal and sure death for Putin(and he knows that) and new instance of his replacement, that would need to implement whatever collective Russians think.

Unfortunately, but the only way to end this war is a Russian military defeat, as no withdraw would ever happen and suggesting something like that is a fantasy, that ignores reality of how Russians are thinking. Yeah, it would have been better if NATO was involved, but on other hand Europeans and USA are too afraid to man up and chew bubble gum and kick some ass - they are now reverse of that chew something that is not bubble gum and take in the ass and Putin likes some young ass.

SubiculumCode 2 hours ago

Yes, Putin cornered himself, the ambitious evil idiot...especially after their official act of joining the invaded lands to Russia.

jltsiren 2 hours ago

That would just be an inconclusive end to the war. An actual surrender can be conditional (an explicit deal that favors the winning side) or unconditional. In an unconditional surrender, the winner is free to do whathever they want. For example, they can walk in, rewrite your constitution, and dismantle your military and the industry supporting it.

_delibash_ an hour ago

That's not how geopolitics work.

bamboozled 11 hours ago

For the time being.

dolia 5 hours ago

I've seen the questionnaires from Moscow streets in the last few years on the topics of war. I've seen what different people write in social networks about it.

Maybe you can trick our naive western friends, but not me.

Being an indifferent somnambula is not the same as being against war.

IshKebab 5 hours ago

Some do, but many don't. They aren't immune to propaganda.

jwr 4 hours ago

Putin didn't take power in an overnight coup. Ordinary Russians didn't do anything about his growing power for what, 20 years or so? It was very much possible to act in the early stages, but it was easier not to, especially when hearing pleasing things about Russia becoming powerful.

owaty 3 hours ago

No they don't.

Who do you think is killing Ukrainians?

It's not Putin himself, and it's not some kind of professional army.

Those are ordinary Russians who decided to join the occupational army, and who are launching drones and rockets at Ukraine every day.

itvision 4 hours ago

Ordinary Russians have NO say in this conflict.

You could face a 15-year prison sentence for calling for peace on social media, or you could be forcibly conscripted.

Furthermore, rallies are equally persecuted. All rallies are outlawed due to the COVID restrictions, and these restrictions have never been lifted.

So far, all the West has done is target ordinary, poor Russians instead of oligarchs and the Tsar himself.

Their quality of life has plummeted, but would you risk your life to speak out against this?

Westerners are only brave in the comments. Come to Russia and show us how it's done. A country where everyone with power or guns serves the Tsar almost directly. Including the courts, the police and the army.

You don't f*cking understand what has happened to the country. It's become a dictatorship.

gpt5 14 hours ago

Data centers are becoming higher priority targets in wars recently, and with humans delegating more to AI, I suspect their priority will increase even further.

Makes me wonder how much compute is already being built in bunkers under mountains.

toomuchtodo 14 hours ago

Power and data has to come from somewhere for those bunkers. Every fiber hut and power substation becomes a target. Can they all be protected? No.

jeltz 12 hours ago

Fibers? Yes, they are easy to protect. The hard part is power generation.

toomuchtodo 12 hours ago

Buried fiber, hard to attack. Fiber repeater shelters, easy to attack. Their locations are public information, and any non public are trivial to find, in my experience as a cybersecurity professional who seeks out infra vulnerabilities for reporting for fun. Public records, satellite imagery, all OSINT one can do from a workstation.

You could potentially bury them in the ground, assuming you don’t use a generator for backup power. To my knowledge, this is not done today except in urban areas where an underground vault is used for power and comms.

https://www.decommsystems.com/resources/what-goes-into-an-il...

ivan_gammel 8 hours ago

Easy to attack, fast to replace. Every attack requires some planning, a drone and time window. That means attack budget. Spending it on traffic lights does not make sense.

MiroslavPokorny 14 hours ago

Datacenters are full of valuable computers and related equipment, but building the equivalent space under a mountain will cost a crazy amount.

Not worth paying 100x for the bunker to save 1x worth of computer stuff.

walrus01 14 hours ago

Building any appreciable amount of compute capacity (on the scale of, let's say, a single large datacenter in northern VA) inside a mountain also becomes a huge heat rejection problem, since with the exception of the 0.00000000001% that leaves the facility as photons down a SM fiber cable, 100% of the energy consumed is turned into heat.

So you build your stuff inside a mountain and run a bunch of big ass liquid cooling loops to heat exchangers in the atmosphere outside the mountain. The requirement of the cooling system being out in the open air means it can also be hit by air strikes, an adversary doesn't need to penetrate the mountain, just take out its cooling.

You'd have to build a fully underground cooling system that goes to a nearby river (or huge lake) and use the cold water from that, which would get costly quick.

testaccount28 13 hours ago

neat. why can't you put the heat in the mountain?

walrus01 13 hours ago

For broadly the same reason that many years of heat from braking has heat-saturated the london underground.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=london+un...

You could probably drill sideways into rocks and pump heat into the mountain for a certain period of time, but on a multi-month or year time scale, it would catch up with you after you had saturated it.

martinjc 13 hours ago

Pionen in sweden is a datacenter in a bunker. The Pirate Bay used to be hosted there.

walrus01 13 hours ago

A few racks or even a couple of dozen racks could be called a datacenter, but nothing on any real scale. Enough to host important and niche things? Sure. I was referring more to like the size of what you might see in Quincy, WA.

jeltz 12 hours ago

Pionen is small but it is quite a bit bigger than "a couple of dozen racks". More like 100-200 if I recall correctly.

jacquesm 9 hours ago

By 1990's standards that was small. Today it is tiny.

martinjc 8 hours ago

In the US the most common deployed size is below 5MW?

Dont know why i can't reply to the person commenting below. But where's the statistics? Who has these datacenters out in the field?

jacquesm 8 hours ago

Yes, but that's not where the volume is. A 'small' data center, even here in Europe has 100's of racks. There are of course many tiny ones but collectively they don't even add up to one single large Google or AWS DC. Those things will run in excess of 1 or even 2 GW.

martinjc 11 hours ago

According to their site, Pionen has 1.5MW of cooling capacity https://swedendedicated.com/datacenter/

efnx 13 hours ago

So they want to build it in space. Trade one heat problem for another, but put it completely out of range (for most attackers).

spiderfarmer 8 hours ago

Yeah, but which attackers do we have to worry about nowadays?

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/russian-satel...

jltsiren 13 hours ago

> You'd have to build a fully underground cooling system that goes to a nearby river (or huge lake) and use the cold water from that, which would get costly quick.

Helsinki gets its water from the 120 km Päijänne Water Tunnel, which cost €200-250 million (adjusted for inflation) to build. Peak flow is 10 m^3/s by gravity alone and up to 20 m^3/s with pumps, which should be enough to cool a 1 GW data center. You could increase the cost by 2x (because real wages have gone up), by another 2x (because middlemen have destroyed productivity), and by yet another 2x (because everything is more expensive in America), and it would still be pretty reasonable.

spiderfarmer 8 hours ago

It's like the Hyperloop all over again.

Musk comes up with a crazy idea.

Investors, "analysts" and sycophants go to great lengths to defend it.

Rational people wonder if everyone is losing their mind.

Musk profits.

kcb 7 hours ago

Yea, there was even that idea to launch 1000s of satellites into LEO on a reusable rocket system. Crazy. How did people fall for that? There's not even that many satellites in total today.

ben_w 4 hours ago

It is indeed difficult to tell in advance (and sometimes after the fact) which of his ideas are sensible and which are nonsense.

Recall that while he managed to hire the right people to get reusable rockets cheap enough for Starlink, it was also the case that in 2016 he said that SpaceX was aiming to use the 2018 Mars launch window for what is now Starship, and also that some time around 2018 it would be possible to summon your Tesla car from the other side of the country and it would find its way to you autonomously and only stop for charging.

MiroslavPokorny an hour ago

Its not difficult, people are selfish, so they lie for their own advantage.

sebzim4500 4 hours ago

How did Musk profit from hyperloop? Except as payment for building stuff that actually exists now.

MiroslavPokorny an hour ago

Musk sells cars.

Hyperloop was stupid and failed, and it also killed in a few places development of public transport, which of course means people continue to buy cars.

Brybry 12 hours ago

Iron Mountain does it but they used an existing limestone mine with a large water reservoir [1][2]

Edit: I guess the scale isn't comparable to a, for example, Google data center though.

[1] https://www.ironmountain.com/data-centers/colocation/our-dat...

[2] https://betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/showcase-pr...

killerstorm 10 hours ago

They already run liquid cooling loops - compute density is way beyond what could circulate through air. Adding more pipes is probably trivial on the scale of datacenter expenses

walrus01 9 hours ago

Liquid cooling loops don't solve the problem of needing to reject the heat to the atmosphere outside of the building. It just makes it more efficient to transport the heat. At the grossest possible definition, a datacenter of N megawatts on Y acres of land is going to emit the same amount of heat whether it's air cooled equipment or liquid is used to take the heat to the outdoor heat exchanging equipment. On the scale of any very large datacenter the heat exchanging equipment is visible from aerial photos (and from space), take a look at google maps for some of the largest hyperscalers for examples.

killerstorm 9 hours ago

I assume that "liquid cooling loop" has an endpoint outside of the building which hosts hardware. In this case it's exactly same problem - just make pipes longer.

Do you need many acres of land to host a heat exchanger?

m4rtink 6 hours ago

So how much does the bunker help if you can just drone the cooling systems on the surface? The the computers either cook themselves or have to do an emergency shutdown.

killerstorm 6 hours ago

It can help to preserve all data and compute. Once cooling can be re-established, you just continue.

kadoban 2 hours ago

That's something, but if it's no harder to disrupt than if it were out in the open, have you really gained much?

happyopossum an hour ago

If the other end of the cooling loop is a giant reservoir, as is the case with plenty of other 100+ mile water transport systems, it doesn’t matter if you drone it. Fly all the drones you want into Lake Anthropic, there’s many more cubic meters of water than there are drones.

jazzyjackson 14 hours ago

The bunkers are already out there e.g. limestone mines in US, Italy,

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/build-design/safer-under...

walrus01 14 hours ago

Lots of people have built commercial, non-military, boutique scale stuff in hardened facilities, nobody I'm aware of has done it at scale. There's certainly money to be made from selling expensive "we put datacenter stuff deep down inside a mine" maybe to some weird enterprise and government customers, so the revenue per rack (or per theoretical 208V 30A circuit?) is probably a lot more than commodity colo. But I would very much like to see the aerial photos, if anyone can link them, to a claimed large scale underground or hardened datacenter.

It's a severe engineering challenge to hide massive heat exchangers on the scale of the datacenters built in the industrial area near Dulles (coordinate example: 38.9817915,-77.417775). Find those on a map and observe the scale of their cooling and generator systems and then try to find anything comparable that's been built underground.

jazzyjackson 14 hours ago

Agreed it’s small potatoes, and as a sibling mentions you will still have infrastructure exposed that poses a target to disable the data center, unless you were to drill geothermal and find an underground river to cool it.

Just wanted to make the point you don’t have to pay to excavate the cave :)

IshKebab 13 hours ago

That's probably just because there's not much demand for it, not because it's difficult.

There are mines with plenty of space in them, and heat removal can be done with water cooling. But who is going to pay 50% more for that when it isn't needed 99.99% of the time?

walrus01 13 hours ago

Or when the same thing can be accomplished by putting nothing in a mine, but an approach as simple as having geographical diversity by paying for some 'normal' colo in Hillsboro, and more normal colo in northern VA on the other side of the continent, and duplicating your stuff between two facilities. Weird underground datacenters aren't exactly known for having a large number of competing on-net carriers.

jeltz 12 hours ago

> Weird underground datacenters aren't exactly known for having a large number of competing on-net carriers.

Huh? The ones I know of have plenty of connectivity. The real issue is your first, that people prefer to just put their stuff in two countries over paying premium for having their servers under ground.

walrus01 12 hours ago

Your definition of connectivity may not be the same as mine, I'm referring to the number of facilities based carriers and those who ride on top of them you can get at major sites in Hillsboro. Facilities with peeringdb pages that have tons of on net carriers. Is there even an underground bunker colo that's big enough to rate its own peeringdb facility page?

misiek08 13 hours ago

Germans hid plane engine factories underground with old (not so efficient) diesel generators running 24/7. 80 years ago, so the tech was leaner. Also they didn’t have issues with ventilation and even today if you don’t know where - you won’t see anything driving around.

boelboel 12 hours ago

There's some 200MW capacity (only 80MW is currently used or being built) data center in a mine near a fjord in Norway. The limiting factor for its capacity seems to be the capacity of the electricity net nearby (which you can just hit and the DC is useless). With how NIMBY Norwegians are there's no way it would ever get to a GW or more even if it might be both technically and economically feasible. That's just one project and can't be replicated anywhere else. It's just a massive advantage that above ground datacenters are relatively 'figured out' and similar everywhere.

edit: 61.9340107, 5.5084207 are the coordinates

walrus01 8 hours ago

Do you know if that 200MW figure is total power budget for the facility (including electricity used for cooling systems and other facilities-support systems), or up to 200MW of electronics loads generating heat? The latter would be something like 300 cabinets with 5-6kW heat each.

boelboel 8 hours ago

Apparently it's for the whole facility, they have a power usage effectiveness of around 1.1 so 175-180MW of electronics.

https://new.abb.com/news/detail/5924/abb-solutions-power-eur...

roenxi 14 hours ago

It might be possible to do on the cheap; underground mines get decommissioned from time to time and could be repurposed as a data centre.

Although I personally would expect some sort of decentralisation option to be more effective. It's difficult to even theorise because we don't know exactly what sort of damage these strikes are doing and what countermeasures are already in place. If this strike has caught Yandex by surprise after almost 5 years of hot war then they really should hire a dude to check up on current events every so often. They must have some sort of contingency planning around a Ukrainian strike.

microtonal 13 hours ago

It's sad that we have moved away so far from the decentralized web from the 90s and the P2P boom of the 00s. Just like solar panels on every house as a source of energy are much harder to take out than just a few power plants, local P2P storage, messaging, source management, etc. are much harder to take out.

But yeah, the economic incentives are creating unicorns and centralizing compute/capital/etc.

jeltz 12 hours ago

The war in Ukraine had showed us that distributed power generation, like solar, and nuclear are most resilient. Nuclear because people do not dare striking the power plants.

yubblegum 6 hours ago

Commodity hardware may be disposable, but data that is not reproducible is worth it. I suspect most storage will move to secure environments.

oytis 14 hours ago

I don't think Yandex DCs are used directly for military purposes much. It's more about harming Russian economy in general, including its highly prided digital infrastructure

fartfeatures 13 hours ago

I don't have specific information about Yandex but don't forget how heavily involved Amazon were with things like: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/world/europe/ukraine-cybe... it wouldn't be a huge stretch to suggest that a lot of cloud hosting providers are neck deep in national security.

andy_ppp 13 hours ago

Also Russia has been targeting Ukrainian digital infrastructure so they make these things fair game IMO.

youngtaff 13 hours ago

Russia is hitting everything in Ukraine… DC, power plants, rail, road housing

Ukraine has a very targeted response but notably tries to minimise civilian casualties

ponector 13 hours ago

Military personnel use the same Yandex services as regular people: delivery, maps, taxi, etc.

Also Yandex is a large cloud provider, they host a lot of government-connected companies.

paaloeye 14 hours ago

They will probably start building DCs in Siberia. Cheap cooling!

microtonal 13 hours ago

That's probably not going to help much. Ukraine has been able to hit targets very far inland with drones. They are also rapidly making advances in ballistic missile development. FP-7 has a range of 200-300km, their new FP-9 will have a range of up to 855km and an accuracy of 20m. I know that Russia is (extremely) large, but with development going at this pace...

paaloeye 13 hours ago

dunno, Moscow to Novosibirsk is around 1,800 miles straight-line distance. The war would be probably over by the time Ukraine would have developed those capabilities.

boelboel 13 hours ago

Novosibirsk only has cheap cooling in the winter, in the summer months it is hot. Better to go somewhere like Sabetta where they have their LNG harbour.

ivan_gammel 8 hours ago

You will need a cable to that location, that will eat significant share of the costs. Location in southern Siberia near some big hydro may work better, and connecting it will be easier to some existing trans-Siberian line.

boelboel 6 hours ago

I don't think it's a great plan for many reasons, the permafrost would make it cost a fortune.

youngtaff 13 hours ago

Ukraine are hitting targets 2,500km away

https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/ukraine-hits-russia...

bob1029 13 hours ago

Let's not forget about the orbital data center idea.

Perhaps an economic justification can be found for placing something so far up the gravity well that its adversaries can no longer physically approach it. Distributing the resource across many satellites would further confound any attack.

Increasing the cost of effect on a single target from $1,000 to $1,000,000,000 makes a difference. Especially when that 2nd option is likely to trigger additional multilateral strategic responses. If the only way to delete your adversaries data centers is with things like nuclear weapons, lasers and multi-stage rocketry, your adversary may have already won the game.

Gigachad 13 hours ago

Until someone blows up a satellite and creates enough shrapnel that every other satellite is destroyed.

microtonal 13 hours ago

Except that doing this at scale is currently still a pipe dream. Space is a near-vacuum, so it's hard to get rid of the heat.

The active thermal control system (ATCS) on the ISS uses an ammonia loop and radiators measuring 13.6 x 3.12 meters, or about 42.5 square meters. It can dissipate 16 kW, which is enough for 16 H200s, or one-quarter of a rack on Earth. For 200 kW, you would need a system 12.5 times larger, about 531 square meters—2.6 times larger than the solar array. The satellite would be enormous, larger than the ISS, and all of that for only three racks.

https://codedtrip.com/en/blog/data-centers-in-space-disastro...

bob1029 13 hours ago

Are you asserting that we must use the exact same heat rejection architecture the ISS uses for data centers?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_droplet_radiator

walrus01 13 hours ago

The problem of the $ per kg to launch huge radiators and "orbital datacenter" type stuff of satellites into space doesn't seem to be resolving itself any time soon. Even if we hand wave away and say that 5 years from now the starship will be such a spectacular success than it costs only $200 per kg to send stuff into space (drastically lower than what it costs now), it would still be vastly less expensive to build a terrestrial solar datacenter in the middle of the southern Libyan desert than it would be to do the same amount of compute in space.

Marha01 13 hours ago

> it would still be vastly less expensive to build a terrestrial solar datacenter in the middle of the southern Libyan desert than it would be to do the same amount of compute in space.

Perhaps, but the parent comment posited that some people would pay the premium for orbital data center due to much better security. At $200 per kg to orbit, it could make sense.

fragmede 9 hours ago

With the caveat that Libya, being located upon Earth, is affected by solar power not working at night or when it's cloudy, and is also subject to being in Libya, which is a country with bureaucrats that are going to subject anything built in the country to their laws.

evgen 13 hours ago

So the "some day in the future" orbiting data centers proposed by a known fraudster will use an experimental-at-best radiator technology that has never been tested in flight yet? That tracks.

Marha01 13 hours ago

Orbital data center constellations are also studied by Google, the idea is not just from Elon.

Marha01 13 hours ago

> Space is a near-vacuum, so it's hard to get rid of the heat.

It's not that hard, Starlink constellation already dissipates around 100 MW of heat, split over many satellites. Any orbital datacenter would use similarly distributed satellites.

Marha01 13 hours ago

> For 200 kW, you would need a system 12.5 times larger, about 531 square meters—2.6 times larger than the solar array. The satellite would be enormous, larger than the ISS, and all of that for only three racks.

Starlink gen 3 satellite is designed to dissipate 250 kW. You are talking about an already solved issue, with real hardware already being built today.

ben_w 13 hours ago

Ground to orbit antisat lasers are already plausibly something various militaries have.

Welding lasers are pretty cheap, the two hard parts are a big enough apperture to focus 500 km away, and adaptive optics, both of which have already been demonstrated decades ago in astronomy.

I'm not saying Iran and North Korea already have such capabilities, but I am saying I think neither would have trouble building it six months ago if they'd wanted to.

remus 4 hours ago

I don't think this really works out. Putting a data center in orbit is basically a question of moving lots of mass which is always going to have a large energy cost for accelerating all that mass. On the other hand someone wanting to damage that data center only has to get the mass of one decently sized bomb to the same velocity.

Unless you're talking about an adversary who has ~no launch capability then the person trying to put the data center out of reach is always going to be massively disadvantaged in terms of the physics.

buildfocus 13 hours ago

Scaleway built one of their Paris AZs in a nuclear fallout shelter: https://www.scaleway.com/en/blog/meet-fr-par-3/

crabbone 13 hours ago

This is a... mischaracterization.

The reason why Ukraine, Russia and Iran are targeting data-centers is because they are easy targets with a lot of expensive equipment, but they don't really impact the military operation. So, they aren't high priority targets. Bomber airplanes, air defenses, launchers for ballistic missiles, command centers, factories manufacturing strategic military equipment, telecommunications, energy infrastructure would be the examples of high priority targets. The data-centers are more of a "we have excess drones, why not use them?"

I find it hard to believe that the military will intentionally use civilian data-centers for its own purposes. At least, not for the core of its operations (for auxiliary functionality: maybe). Military data-centers are likely to be in protected locations, perhaps using different h/w that addresses the cooling problem.

Also, it's a bit myopic to think that AI is having such a universal and large impact on society. Jobs that provide essential goods and services are, by and large, unaffected by AI. Farmers, construction workers, cooks etc. don't really use any of the AI stuff on the day to day basis, if at all.

scotty79 11 hours ago

Those data centers participate hugely in generating of internet misinformation and propaganda that shapes deterioration of support in European populations. Those are valid military targets.

_delibash_ an hour ago

Ah yes, the infamous Russian disinformation trope. They really did a number on you people since 2016.

_delibash_ an hour ago

One of a few sensible comments in a sea of delusion.

conmod278 10 hours ago

You are also forgetting the undersea cables.

PowerElectronix 10 hours ago

In bunkers, IDK. In places far away from conflict or conflictive nations, a lot.

kolinko 9 hours ago

With AI there is little data in datacenters - the only thing you lose is % compute.

nixass 8 hours ago

Datacenters are not only "data"

wartywhoa23 4 hours ago

- "Emperor, how do we make them bury our micellium deep underground so that the meatsacks are unable to destroy our key nodes when we take over the control?"

- "Just make them wage some wars, they'll bury it themselves".

usrnm 14 hours ago

From a purely engineering perspective, this and the destroyed AWS datacenters in the Middle East show an interesting trend. How will it affect the way future datacenters and services hosted in them are built? Will we see a rise in decentralized systems and much larger networks of smaller DCs?

yablak 14 hours ago

No, just more underground construction

yard2010 14 hours ago

And sky rocketing (...) prices

Gigachad 13 hours ago

It would be cheaper for most businesses to just go on prem again.

wiether 13 hours ago

RTO also for the servers?

pu_pe 13 hours ago

This should have a material impact on SpaceX stock. Wouldn't it be much easier to harden datacenters against attack under ground than in space?

adventured 11 hours ago

The SpaceX stock is floating solely (and temporarily) on fairy dust, it will not have any impact on the stock what-so-ever.

As the market goes, so goes the multiple being granted to SPCX. That is, when the AI bubble contracts on the multiples being granted, SPCX will decline dramatically. In my observation HN typically widely can't differentiate properly between the real AI economy being developed and the multiples being temporarily granted in the stock market, it's common on here that people think they're the same thing ('when the AI bubble ends'). Back in reality what is going to happen is an implosion of the multiples when the growth slows (or suddenly stops due to an economic shock), and despite that the AI economy broadly will radically expand regardless over 10, 20, 30 years. See: the Internet build out (and market valuations), it will occur much the same conceptually.

kolinko 9 hours ago

SpaceX has a de facto monopoly on space now. And they are 10-20 years ahead of even China. No nation now has a response to Falcon 9 - sth SpaceX built over 10 years ago.

fch42 10 hours ago

To merely destroy "space data centers", you need not have very advanced targeting technology nor space lasers or whatnot. Just launch a few things releasing little ball bearings or steel needles or something like that - and "poison" the entire orbit.

If all you seek is to destroy (how en-vogue...) then that's more than perfect; not just destroy what's there but also make sure that by virtue of what remains (debris) nothing will get re-built.

spiderfarmer 8 hours ago

A single EMP would be enough without causing excessive space debris. It's not like someone will simply fly in and swap some hardware.

fch42 8 hours ago

Well ... first, that needs a "gadget" suitable for creating an EMP - which is still higher-rate tech than a missile being able to just reach a few hundred miles altitude and then "conventionally blow up into tiny pieces". And second ... as I said, as belligerant or terrorist, why would you not want to destroy / orbit-poison ? Why would it ever be a good idea to "destruction-less disable" space infrastructure?

driverdan 3 hours ago

Why? Orbital DCs are completely impractical and unrealistic.

swiftcoder 13 hours ago

> Will we see a rise in decentralized systems and much larger networks of smaller DCs?

Or will we see civilian datacenters with their own defensive drone swarms, and a couple of phalanx-style point defence systems for good measure?

childintime 13 hours ago

It will mean data-centers move to space and then Musk will use his space prowess to bring weapons into space, in collaboration with the US military, and deny/strong-arm/corrupt governments around the world to protect his treasure, including the US government. He'll have a robot army to back it up.

He is on his way to become the first ($100 trillion) supervillain. Until 2 years ago, he stood at the center of most of the good news, then he got a few calls from Putin and he became unhinged from our (obscured) point of view. Nowadays he's a dark pattern.

Capitalism culminates in him, and he has to decide what to make of the world. He is our de-facto king, while on a personal level he has to decide what to do with his fortune. Put it into smart contracts for an AI to use and rule the world? Giving it to his kids would be underwhelming, not what he lived for.

People joked that mankind existed to bring forth the machines and would then become superfluous. The irony of it. Well, it seems irony has mr Musk. He sees the petty online bickering and he sees himself as alone, as the only adult in the room, who has to decide the fate of humanity, and his power in many domains puts him to the task.

He has his fiduciary responsibility that puts the interests of his share-holders first. He sees that as a healthy check on his power. At the end of all his calculations he has responsibilities akin to the Star Wars Emperor. Just like many white men, who come spend the remainder of their days in function and in defense of their property. Not in defense of life.

So Musk needs his antagonist to arrive on the scene, so he can repurpose his empire for the good the antagonist brings, as he represents a complete overhaul of the way life is lived. So the jury is out on mr Musk, and may he always remember his status as an American is just a hustle gone wild. Similar to the dynamic of how a liar has to keep extending his web of lies. He will make it into a machine that will carry his burden going forward. And then what? When, if ever, will he remember he is an African, and a friend of his own antagonist? His final words may sound like: Luke, I am your Father!

TheOtherHobbes 12 hours ago

Data centres will not be moving to space. The physics and economics don't work.

It's not that it can't be done at all, but heat dissipation at scale in space is an insane engineering challenge, the tech to make giant radiators work doesn't exist yet, and even if it did it would extremely costly to develop and deploy.

Musk is a textbook narcissist. His consistent pattern is to make grandiose promises - literal future faking - fulfil a small percentage of them, then make even bigger and more grandiose promises and hope investors have a short memory. (They do.)

As a narcissist his primary relationship orientation is contempt for others. He's more interested in damaging projects he doesn't like - like the left-leaning community on the original Twitter, using promises of Hyperloop to kill high speed rail, ignoring the CSA from Grok, and of course the USAid fiasco - than seeing through the projects he claims to be developing to completion.

He fits in perfectly with Thiel, Altman, and the rest. The tech is sometimes interesting, but the alignment is fundamentally hostile to the rest of humanity.

ben_w 12 hours ago

> but heat dissipation at scale in space is an insane engineering challenge, the tech to make giant radiators work doesn't exist yet, and even if it did it would extremely costly to develop and deploy

Different problem.

Cooling can be done in space, it's a normal problem; not easy, nothing in space is easy, but on the scale of space it is normal.

However, at the temperature you would run a chip at, a radiator you make for space will just work better, reject more heat, if you leave it on the ground.

We get convective cooling down here as well as radiative. At operational temperature, convection more than makes up for the atmosphere being a heat bath at ~20 C or whatever.

spiderfarmer 8 hours ago

Everything is possible. Doesn't mean you should do it. You can also put datacenters on the sea floor in a nuclear submarine. That might be even easier.

But does it make sense to do it?

No.

Marha01 12 hours ago

> t's not that it can't be done at all, but heat dissipation at scale in space is an insane engineering challenge, the tech to make giant radiators work doesn't exist yet, and even if it did it would extremely costly to develop and deploy.

You are overstating the engineering difficulty. Starlink constellation already dissipates around 100MW.

fch42 9 hours ago

If you solve your cooling problem in space by distributing 10000 servers across 100 orbits then you replace one engineering challenge with the next; good luck with the satellite-satellite optical crossbars, and even more with the time travel beam shapers to get the communication latency between the components of your "orbit-distributed data center" to-target.

(the sarcasm is intended; there are some usecases for "space servers", around stealth for sure; to "scale it like a terrestrial DC" though ... dunno; not matter how I turn it, it just seems crazy expensive)

Marha01 8 hours ago

Communication latency and bandwidth would present big issues for AI satellites used for training. But if they are inference-only, then the latency and bandwidth demands are much, much lower. Starlink already demonstrates the required parameters.

fch42 8 hours ago

Indeed ... yet the servers for that already exist and are largely ground-based - "edge" compute of the large CDNs through which much of the internet's traffic flows anyway.

Will starlink build its own edge ? Maybe. We'll see. Whether it makes sense to have this infrastructure "colocated in space" if you're not also the owner of the "connection infrastructure in space" though? It'll come down to cost. If I were anyone else but SpaceX ... that's where my eyes would be.

ben_w 12 hours ago

In 2016, Musk was forecasting no-asterisk-needed cross country self driving and Mars launches within two years.

He may have been a wrong'un before that, but he was definitely already doing a confidence trick by that point.

r721 12 hours ago

BBC story linked to this chart which is pretty interesting:

>Internet Connectivity for AS200350 (YandexCloud)

https://ioda.inetintel.cc.gatech.edu/asn/200350?from=1791331...

binaryturtle an hour ago

I like how the status reports are informative and rater detailed. I recently dealt with outages of my own German webhoster and they didn't even have a status page. I had to email their support to get some details (at least they replied very quickly :) )

PowerElectronix 10 hours ago

Russia, if you value your stuff you should not start wars you are not prepared to fight.

nojvek 4 hours ago

When Trump is actively helping Russia, Russia is encouraged to keep on going.

edg5000 13 hours ago

Yandex is pretty good search engine. It has zero censorship. Just the raw internet. Sometimes it more than I've bargained for but as a user I'm happy the option exists.

The severity of the attacks on Russian borders have I believe still a limited effect on the course of the war, but I suppose it certainly won't hurt Ukraine's chances to in some form survive this war.

orf 12 hours ago

> It has zero censorship

My dude, it’s one of the most heavily censored search engines on earth

scotty79 11 hours ago

I think it entirely depends of what censorship you care about. If political censorship is irrelevant to you and puritanistic and copyright censorship is what's in you way then western search engines are more heavily censored.

etatester 4 hours ago

This. Google like ChatGPT have started censoring content like people did not populate this earth by fornication. Yandex cares much less about this sort of censorship, at least from what I can tell. Even Bing fell from its throne. IYKYK.

vardump 12 hours ago

Zero censorship? Who do you think you are kidding?

znnajdla 12 hours ago

The real question is will the Russian government survive their disastrous war in some form? 50% of Russia's oil infrastructure and refining capacity has been taken out in the last six months. Do you think Russia will be able to survive that? Disruption of Russian critical infrastructure routes are getting worse by the day. In the border regions you can't even get a truck driver to agree to move a load for $10,000 across some of the highways of Russia that supply Crimea. Ukraine is doing more than just surviving. It is beating Russia.

RuslanL 8 hours ago

> 50% of Russia's oil infrastructure and refining capacity has been taken out

No, it has been merely hit (usually once) and typically repaired in the span of a few days. The whole "double-digits percents have been destroyed" typically comes from not so high quality news agencies. Some things were destroyed more thoroughly, but their margin is largely negligible.

defly 12 hours ago

Zero censorship???

Svoka an hour ago

It is also arm of fascist government comnmitting outright genocide with war which affected tens of millions and over million victims.

They absolutely censor all Ukrainian content, proactively collaborate with russian 'law enforcement' and just plain out owned by state.

thway15269037 6 hours ago

Yandex is one of the most notoriously pro-western companies in Russia, actively supporting relocation attempts. They even removed Russian borders from their maps in 2022. Some people claim they do this day have intelligence sharing agreements with Ukraine.

Also, Yandex have a ban on any pro-russian ads and pro-military stuff (curiously so, not so much against drugs and crime).

Among other things, they actively lobbied for more internet censorship (because as major player they benefited from being white-listed and not affected by them).

People cheering in this thread do not realize that a lot of patriots in Russia will actually support full Yandex demolition.

Oh well. Some people never learn.

artemisart 6 hours ago

> Some people claim they do this day have intelligence sharing agreements with Ukraine.

No or they wouldn't be hit.

thway15269037 6 hours ago

It would not be a first time Ukraine did bite a hand that feeds them. It happened every time, including with western allies, see even western-covered scandals with weapons, leaked stuff, recent ongoing south korea scandal etc. If you would count all cases over the years, it would be in hundreds or even thousands.

It probably is incomprehensible to a western mind.

itzprime 4 hours ago

It literally changed to basically have exclusively state registered media, is closely aligned with Putin (and has Putin allies in big positions). So no its pretty clear that they hit it

celsoazevedo 3 hours ago

You're pushing it a bit, aren't you?

Also, I find it hard to believe that at this point any major Russian company is allowed to be aligned with Ukraine, let alone have an intelligence sharing with them.

Anyway, Russia as a country decided to invade a neighbour, attack their infrastructure, etc. "Sow the wind reap the whirlwind".

wiseowise an hour ago

> hundreds or even thousands

Would be easy to link a couple of them then?

Waterluvian 3 hours ago

I don’t think Russia can sustain, nor would the Putin regime tolerate any organization that cannot be controlled. Whatever Yandex does or doesn’t do, it’s by the will of the regime.

Svoka an hour ago

Yandex is a state propped and state owned cosplay of western civilization, similarly to all other aspects russia.

KingOfCoders 14 hours ago

https://status.yandex.cloud/

nvtop 13 hours ago

Ironically, doesn't open for me at the moment :)

jacquesm 9 hours ago

That is a status update of sorts.

celsoazevedo 3 hours ago

There goes Kagi's results provider. :-P

vjvjvjvjghv 8 hours ago

Anybody have an idea how this insanity can ever end? Seems Russia is willing to kill off a whole generation of young people. Will this just go on forever? Or will Ukraine run out of soldiers?

AnimalMuppet 4 hours ago

Eventually Putin will die. Maybe he'll keep power until his deathbed, maybe there will be a coup and he'll be removed and/or killed. But one way or another, eventually Putin will die. When he does, this insanity can end.

I don't know that it can end from anything short of that.

jwr 4 hours ago

History does not support this, unfortunately. Russia has always been aggressive towards outside world and invaded its neighbors multiple times. Putin is just the latest in a long string of aggressive leaders.

AnimalMuppet 3 hours ago

True. But this can end when Putin dies. Will there be something else? Likely, yes. Hopefully it will be a decade or three later, though.

TiredOfLife 3 hours ago

This insanity will only end when there are no more russians

supriyo-biswas 14 hours ago

Should likely share https://status.yandex.cloud/en/timeline as well, though it only shows two of them being hit, not three.

defly 12 hours ago

From public sources in last 4 days hits in cities: Sasovo, Kaluga and Vladimir

meindnoch 13 hours ago

Nice! Keep it up boys!

kristianp 2 hours ago

BBC News story on this topic https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw0k0g57mk3zo

siva7 10 hours ago

So three important data centers strategically chosen to be destroyed? As far as i know such an loss couldn't even Google compensate, let alone Yandex. This could severely impact their economy for months.

motionlessveloc 10 hours ago

Google states they have 30 locations around the world. Losing three would be painful but not fatal.

https://datacenters.google/locations/

tpolm 7 hours ago

not all datacenters are created equal. Remember the consequences of the AWS outage caused by problems in just a single region

chrismustcode 3 hours ago

A single AWS region can be a dozen DCs. An AZ is shared infra (power circuit, fiber ingress) and be over a few buildings.

Muromec 14 hours ago

3rd cloud data center so far.

usrnm 14 hours ago

They only have 3. At least, the main ones

allywilson 14 hours ago

Looks like 4 in Russia, 1 in Kazakhstan if you select the Zones drop down on the status page.

usrnm 14 hours ago

My information may be outdated, but the others are much smaller and less relevant

Muromec 14 hours ago

Well, that was fast then. Maybe /somebody/ shouldn't have targeted Parkova data center and mobile network cores.

JumpCrisscross 13 hours ago

Reuters says “Yandex operates five data centres” [1].

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-yandex-says-sec...

petre 13 hours ago

Well, tomorrow we will be hearing about the 4th DC being struck.

arpinum 12 hours ago

It's in Moscow, they have strong air defences.

wombat-man 11 hours ago

They've hit targets in Moscow, we'll see.

defly 12 hours ago

Still few left. BTW someone built a map of russian largests DCs (use Google Translate): https://hackyourmom.com/karta-data-czentriv-na-rasii/

qarl 7 hours ago

Just in time to derail Russian disinformation before the election.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/russ...

I'll be curious to see how it affects the mood around HN.

EDIT: How curious - the article above removed all mention of disinformation - but you can still see it in the URL....

driverdan 3 hours ago

Because it was wrong. It was regular crawler traffic that had nothing to do with disinformation.

qarl an hour ago

> Because it was wrong. It was regular crawler traffic that had nothing to do with disinformation.

You got a source for that?

_delibash_ 2 hours ago

Oh lord, this whole thread reads like an NSA/Mossad back and forth.

dingaling911 2 hours ago

haha, true. and the operators have flag capability.

znnajdla 13 hours ago

Everything in Russia depends on Yandex. The impact on both businesses and daily life is massive. You can’t order a taxi or food delivery in most parts of Russia now. Retail chains POS systems in stores and payment systems are down too. Russians on threads and Twitter are complaining they can’t even buy things in stores. Of course, Putin himself doesn’t understand the impact because he barely knows how to use a computer and never uses the Internet.

redanddead 2 hours ago

this is actually crazy, but absolutely a predictable outcome

shouldn't these be underground? would it even matter if they were, ukraine would just make mole drones..

gitowiec 13 hours ago

That's great!

mempko 2 hours ago

Is it? Every time Russia hits civilian infrastructure, it strengthens Ukrainian's resolve. You don't think the same thing will happen in Russia? Nationalism increases in times of war. Did the Iranians revolt against Iran when US hit the school full of children? No, it strengthened people's resolve. The movement Iran had before the war died down and people unified.

We should never celebrate hitting civilian infrastructure. Russia right now is bombing bridges in Kyiv, it's awful.

All wars end with diplomacy or when one side is dead or completely out of resources

paaloeye 13 hours ago

Is https://habr.com normally down?

paaloeye 13 hours ago

https://uptimerobot.habr.com doesn't say it's down, but it time outs.