Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centers cripple Yandex services and hit everyday users

Ukrainian forces have hit multiple Russian data centers in early October, targeting Yandex’s infrastructure and a VK facility in St. Petersburg. Monitoring group NetBlocks recorded Yandex Cloud operating at roughly 30% of normal capacity, affecting 84 cloud services and causing widespread outages in Yandex Pay, taxi apps, food-delivery, mapping, email and streaming platforms. Yandex acknowledged serious damage to one center, shutdown of another and disruptions at a third, and noted that its three supercomputers were likely heavily impacted, potentially setting back Russian AI progress.

Users such as a Moscow journalist and a St. Petersburg barista experienced payment failures, while residents abroad also lost access to Yandex services. Government courts and regional websites reported technical problems, and small firms relying on Yandex Cloud faced downtime. Analysts say the concentration of data-center capacity in a few firms makes Russia vulnerable, especially given data-localisation rules that limit backup options.