Ukraine strikes three Yandex data centers, disrupting services across Russia

Ukraine said its drones hit three Yandex data centers in the Russian regions of Ryazan, Kaluga and Vladimir, targeting the company’s core infrastructure. The attacks halted operations at the Sasovo and Vladimir sites and knocked out several modules at the Kaluga facility.

The disruptions have affected Yandex’s suite of services, including Mail, Pay, Disk, Go and its AI assistant Alice, as well as external websites and apps that rely on the company’s cloud platform. Users abroad reported problems accessing Yandex-based taxi and food-ordering services in several former Soviet states.

Yandex confirmed that its funds are safe but could not give a timeline for full restoration. The firm has limited Yandex Disk downloads, redirected taxi drivers to Google Maps or Waze, and begun moving data to alternative cloud providers such as VK Cloud, Selectel and K2Cloud. It also added a force-majeure clause to its user agreement covering attacks by Ukrainian drones.

Analysts cited by The Bell warned that some capacity may not be fully recovered and that equipment replacement could take up to six months, potentially raising cloud-service prices. Yandex shares fell more than 7.6% on the Moscow Exchange after the first strike.

Cybersecurity experts noted a near-50% drop in Russian bot traffic following the outages, a change highlighted by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as reducing online hostility.

Russia’s digital development minister described the attack as “unprecedented,” while the State Duma said data-center protection is the responsibility of private operators.

"They won’t stop sending me requests and confirmations to prove I’m not a robot. I’m not a robot!" – Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT, posted on Telegram, later deleting the message.