Ukrainian strike drones damaged a data center operated for Russia's Federal Tax Service in Gorodets, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, overnight on Oct. 23. The Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ and the Telegram outlet Astra reported the strike, which Data Cent
Wide landscape view of the town of Gorodets in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, the location of the targeted data center facility.er Dynamics covered the same day. The Federal Tax Service is the revenue arm of Russia's Ministry of Finance.
The Gorodets building is one of two key Federal Tax Service data centers, which run in a geographically distributed mode, according to Militarnyi. The other is the Federal Data Center in Dubna, outside Moscow. Kyiv Post reported that the Gorodets facility opened on Dec. 7, 2015, and that it forms part of a three-center backup system alongside Dubna and a reserve site at Yerzovka in the Volgograd region.
The centers store and process state registers, including centralized tax databases, civil registry records, and the register of legal entities, and possibly cadastral data. Mikhail Klimarev, executive director of the Internet Protection Society, described those holdings to the radio station Ekho Moskvy, as reported by Meduza.
"The facility is one of two key data processing centers of the Federal Tax Service of Russia operating in a geo-distributed mode," Exilenova+ said. "The damage to this facility could potentially affect the operation of state information systems of the Russian Federation."
Gleb Nikitin, governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region, said air defenses downed 19 drones, and that falling debris injured three people and damaged homes, an educational facility, and one infrastructure site, according to Gwara Media and Kyiv Post. Gorodets authorities switched schools and colleges to remote learning, canceled public events, and suspended traffic across the dam of the Gorky Reservoir, Kyiv Post reported, citing the local outlet NN.ru. Russia's Defense Ministry said air defenses downed 443 drones nationwide that night.
The strike is part of a widening campaign against data centers on both sides. Ukraine has hit Yandex data centers three times since mid-October, Meduza reported, while Russian strikes have damaged Ukrainian sites. Baxtel counts 58 data center facilities in Russia, run by 18 providers. IXcellerate operates 7 sites and Rostelecom 16, and the biggest tracked site is IXcellerate's Moscow South Campus (MOS5) at 64 MW.
Militarnyi reported the impact of the strike and the extent of damage to the facility are still being assessed.
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