Ukraine strikes third Yandex data center, disrupting digital services across Russia

A third Yandex data center in Russia was hit by Ukrainian drones over the weekend, forcing it to shut down and causing further disruptions to cloud services, payments, deliveries and other online services across the country.

The latest attack, overnight Sunday, targeted a Yandex facility in Vladimir, following strikes on two other data centers in the Ryazan and Kaluga regions earlier last week.

“The data center has shut down completely, and the remaining infrastructure is unstable. The platform is operating in emergency mode,” Yandex said in a statement.

Over the past week, Ukrainian drones targeted three of Yandex's six data centers in Russia, forcing two facilities to shut down completely and damaging infrastructure at the third.

The first attack occurred overnight October 7-8, when drones struck a Yandex data center in Sasovo, in the Ryazan region, sparking a fire and forcing the company to shut down the facility. The site, which opened in 2014, reportedly houses two of Yandex's three supercomputers used to train artificial intelligence models.

A second strike hit a data center in Kaluga on October 9, damaging part of its infrastructure. Yandex said no employees were injured and emergency responders were working at the site. The third facility, targeted over the weekend in Vladimir, houses Galushkin, another Yandex supercomputer considered among the most powerful in Russia. Yandex has not disclosed whether any of its supercomputers were damaged in the attacks.

The three targeted facilities have a combined capacity of approximately 115 megawatts.

Widespread impact

The attacks have disrupted Yandex Cloud, which provides computing infrastructure to thousands of businesses, as well as some of the company's own services and third-party platforms that depend on its servers.

According to the Russian internet watchdog, users have experienced problems accessing email, booking taxis, ordering food and making payments through Yandex Pay. The company's Alice voice assistant and connected smart home devices have also reportedly stopped working in some households.

More than a dozen third-party services hosted on Yandex infrastructure were also reportedly affected, including retailers, internet providers, an online psychotherapy service, fitness businesses and the Russian segment of TikTok.

The full extent of the disruptions remains unclear. Yandex Cloud served approximately 64,000 customers as of mid-2026, according to the company's financial disclosures, but Yandex has not revealed how many were affected by the attacks.

Following the latest strike, the company advised cloud customers to consider alternative recovery plans rather than relying solely on switching between parts of Yandex Cloud's own infrastructure 

Russian state media reported that Yandex had reached agreements with competing cloud providers Selectel, K2Cloud and VK Cloud to help affected customers move their data and services more quickly.

Retaliatory attack

In a statement Friday, Yandex described its data centers as the “iron heart” of the company and acknowledged the widespread impact of the outages.

“Every outage means disrupted plans and an inability to do things that are part of everyday life or work,” the company said. “At this point, it is very difficult to provide a timeline for restoring the equipment at the data centers.”

On Saturday, Yandex also updated its terms of service to exclude liability for failing to meet contractual obligations because of drone strikes and other attacks, potentially limiting customers' ability to seek compensation for disruptions.

The attacks have prompted discussions within the Russian government about strengthening protection for the country's digital infrastructure.

Russian Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadayev said his ministry was working with the Defense Ministry on measures to improve security at Yandex facilities.

“Yandex has faced an unprecedented attack. We are discussing how to protect these facilities,” Shadayev added.

The strikes come after Russian attacks damaged several Ukrainian data centers and telecommunications facilities in late September, disrupting internet access for thousands of households.

At least six Ukrainian data centers, including facilities operated by MiroHost, Parkovy, Data Group, Utels and Pautina, were damaged. Infrastructure belonging to major telecommunications providers Kyivstar and Ukrtelecom was also hit.

A Russian strike on September 23 disrupted fixed-line internet access for approximately 100,000 households in Kyiv and the surrounding region, according to Ukrainian officials.

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

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week acknowledged attacks on data centers in Russia, describing them as retaliation for Russian strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure.

“We always respond in kind. You all know that they have attacked and continue to attack our data centers. We responded,” Zelensky told reporters.