Ukrainian attacks on Yandex data hubs cripple Russian court hearings
Ukrainian strikes on Yandex data centers caused technical failures that halted dozens of arbitration court hearings across several Russian regions.
Ukrainian armed forces struck a Yandex data center in Sasovo, Ryazan region on October 8, leading to a widespread technical malfunction that disrupted Russia's arbitration courts. PravoTech, which manages the electronic court system, announced a mass outage at the Yandex Cloud facility, affecting courts in Sverdlovsk, Smolensk, Tula, Kostroma, Ivanovo, Yaroslavl, Altai Krai and the Volga district. The outage blocked online hearings, audio-video recordings and the processing of documents through the Moy Arbitr platform.
Consequently, dozens of hearings scheduled between October 8 and 14 were either cancelled or interrupted, and several petitions were left unreviewed. As of October 16, the problem persisted, with court websites failing to open case files and rulings remaining unavailable for download.
Why it matters
The attacks expose how cyber-infrastructure can be weaponized to disrupt a country's legal system.
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