Ukrainian drone strikes disrupt Yandex cloud and payments

Ukrainian drone strikes on Yandex data centers knocked cloud, payments, and apps offline; traffic data and site counts still conflict.

Ukrainian drone strikes between roughly 7 and 11 October 2026 damaged Yandex data centers in Sasovo—called Ryazan in one account—Kaluga, and Vladimir, disrupting cloud, payments, and everyday apps. Sources disagree on scale and timing: three of five centers versus three of six, and strikes dated 7–9 October versus Sasovo on 8 October, Kaluga on 9 October, and Vladimir on 11 October. Sasovo and Vladimir were fully offline and Kaluga degraded; Yandex Cloud, serving about 64,000 customers, ran in emergency mode, with NetBlocks reporting about 30% of normal connectivity on 11 October, while Yandex Pay remained down and customer funds were said to be safe. Disk users saw HTTP 302, 500, and 504 errors, and permanent data loss, injuries, malware, and unauthorized access were not confirmed; AI supercomputers at targeted sites were damaged to an undisclosed extent. Cloudflare said Search (AS13238) fell about 99% and Cloud (AS200350) about 90% below baseline, but attributed the Search drop mainly to verified crawlers such as YandexBot, disagreeing with earlier posts that framed a collapse of Yandex bot traffic; malicious automation largely moved elsewhere and the global bot share stayed near 39%. Later accounts added a Sberbank data-center strike and a claim that 95% of Russian centers are in drone range, while a headline’s 29% drop in US posts was not supported by its own summary.

• Ukrainian drone strikes hit Yandex sites named as Sasovo (Ryazan in one account), Kaluga, and Vladimir between about 7 and 11 October 2026; sources disagree on three of five versus three of six centers and on exact days.
• Sasovo and Vladimir were fully shut down and Kaluga degraded; one account says two of six centers were knocked offline.
• Yandex Cloud (about 64,000 customers) ran in emergency mode; NetBlocks put connectivity near 30% of normal on 11 October. Yandex Pay stayed down, with funds said safe and no restore timeline.
• Yandex Disk downloads failed with HTTP 302, 500, and 504 errors; Console, API, S3, and Kubernetes were partial and Monium was offline. No injuries, permanent data loss, malware, or unauthorized access were confirmed.
• AI-training supercomputers at targeted sites were reported damaged; the extent was not disclosed.
• On 11 October, Cloudflare said Search (AS13238) was about 99% and Yandex.Cloud (AS200350) about 90% below baseline; it attributed the Search drop mainly to verified crawlers such as YandexBot, not malicious bots, which largely moved…
• An early Hacker News item cited Yandex Cloud status incident 2136. A later headline claimed a 29% drop in US posts, while its body described automated traffic at 0.4% of peak and Storm-1516 views falling from millions to dozens.
• 404 Media reported a further strike on a Sberbank data center; a researcher said 95% of Russian data centers are within Ukrainian drone range.