A Ukrainian drone strike on the night of 18 October damaged a data centre in Russia's Leningrad region belonging to VK, the operator of VKontakte, and users reported problems loading feeds, streaming music, uploading photos and signing in through the weekend. VK confirmed the facility was targeted but denied any effect on services, and has not disclosed the damage or how many servers were hit. Downdetector logged about 6,600 complaints on Sunday, including roughly 600 within a single hour; the Russian monitoring service Sboy recorded around 2,100; NetBlocks measured connectivity associated with VK at 56% of normal levels during the incident. Ukrainian drone manufacturer Fire Point said its FP-1 drones struck several targets in the region including the VK site, describing it as a key VKontakte data centre that held more than 20,000 servers in 640 racks; VK co-founder Pavel Durov said he built it about 15 years ago and that "they failed to protect it". The strike continues a reciprocal campaign: Ukrainian forces hit Yandex data centres three times earlier in October and reportedly targeted a Sberbank facility, while Russian missile strikes destroyed equipment at Ukrainian operator Datagroup's Kyiv data centre. Data centres are now battlefield targets, so physical resilience is part of cyber resilience.

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