Russian social media giant VK faces disruptions after data center drone strike

Thousands of Russian users reported problems accessing the country's largest social network, VKontakte, and its music streaming service over the weekend following a Ukrainian drone strike on a data center near St. Petersburg.

The disruptions began Sunday, when users complained of difficulties loading news feeds, playing music and accessing other features of VK's platforms.

VK confirmed that its facility in the Leningrad region was targeted in the overnight attack on October 18 but denied that the incident had affected its services, saying they remained available as usual. The company did not disclose the extent of the damage or how many servers were affected.

Independent monitoring services, however, recorded a surge in user complaints and a decline in VK's network connectivity. It was not immediately clear whether the disruptions were caused by the strike.

Outage-tracking website Downdetector received approximately 6,600 reports of problems with VK's services on Sunday, including about 600 within a single hour. Another Russian monitoring service, Sboy, registered roughly 2,100 complaints. Internet monitoring organization NetBlocks reported that connectivity associated with VK had fallen to 56% of normal levels during the incident.

By Monday, the number of complaints had declined, according to Russian monitoring service Detector404, although users continued to report problems uploading photos and videos, streaming music, logging into their accounts and sending messages.

Ukrainian drone manufacturer Fire Point said Ukrainian forces used its FP-1 drones to strike several targets in the region, including VK's data center. The company claimed the facility had sustained significant damage, although VK has not confirmed the extent of the destruction.

According to Fire Point, the facility is one of VKontakte's key data centers, responsible for storing and processing user data, including photos, videos and other content. The company cited previously published figures indicating that the site housed more than 20,000 servers in 640 racks.

Ukrainian media outlets and open-source intelligence analysts reported that the strike caused extensive damage to the building, including the partial collapse of its roof. Those reports could not be independently verified.

Pavel Durov, who co-founded VKontakte before leaving Russia and launching Telegram, said Sunday that he had built the data center about 15 years ago, and it was sold to VK a few years later.

"They failed to protect it," he wrote.

VK is one of Russia's largest technology companies, operating the social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, Mail.ru email services and the government-backed Max messaging app, among other products.

The reported outages come amid repeated attacks on data centers in Russia and Ukraine. Earlier in October, Ukrainian forces struck data centers belonging to Russian technology giant Yandex three times. Following the third reported attack, users across Russia experienced problems accessing Yandex services and numerous other websites.

A data center belonging to Sberbank, Russia's majority state-owned banking giant, was also reportedly targeted in a separate attack.

Russia has also repeatedly struck Ukrainian data centers in recent weeks, damaging infrastructure used by businesses and telecommunications providers.

On Monday, Ukrainian telecommunications operator Datagroup said a Russian ballistic missile strike had destroyed equipment and infrastructure at one of its Kyiv data centers, leaving the facility beyond repair.

Russian attacks in September damaged at least six Ukrainian data centers, including facilities operated by MiroHost, Parkovyi, UTELS and Pavutyna.

Moscow has claimed that Ukrainian data centers were being used to support the country's armed forces.