Drone attacks disrupt Yandex data centres, affecting services across Russia

Timeline of the attacks

Over the course of one week in October 2026, three separate Yandex data centres in Russia were hit by drone strikes. The first attack took place overnight between 7 and 8 October at the Sasovo facility in the Ryazan region, causing a fire and forcing a complete shutdown. The next strike came on 9 October in Kaluga, damaging part of the infrastructure. The third and most recent attack targeted the Vladimir data centre over the weekend, again leading to a full shutdown.

Yandex, often called "Russia's Google", operates six data centres in the country. The three targeted facilities together account for about 115 megawatts of capacity. Two were shut down completely, while the third suffered significant damage. Yandex described the situation as "unprecedented" and said its platform was running in emergency mode. The company has not provided a timeline for restoring normal operations. Recorded Future News↗ (opens in a new tab) France 24↗ (opens in a new tab)

Impact on users and businesses

The attacks have caused widespread disruption to Yandex Cloud, which provides computing power and storage to around 64,000 customers. Many of Yandex's own services were affected, including email, taxi booking, food delivery, and payment systems. The Alice voice assistant and smart home devices stopped working for some users. Third-party services hosted on Yandex infrastructure also went down, including retailers, internet providers, fitness apps, and the Russian version of TikTok.

A Yandex taxi driver told AFP, "I can't get anything to work at all. I've never seen anything like this before." The Russian internet watchdog confirmed problems with payments and online services across the country. Yandex advised cloud customers to activate their disaster recovery plans and warned that switching between its own data centres might not be enough.

Company and government response

Yandex has reached agreements with rival cloud providers Selectel, K2Cloud, and VK Cloud to help affected customers move their data and services. The company called its data centres the "iron heart" of its business and acknowledged the outages had disrupted daily life and work for many people.

Russian Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadayev said his ministry was working with the Defence Ministry to improve security at Yandex facilities. He described the attacks as "unprecedented" and said new protection measures were under discussion.

Context: retaliation and risks

These drone strikes follow Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centres and telecoms infrastructure in late September, which disrupted internet access for thousands of Ukrainian households. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attacks on Russian data centres were retaliation for Russian strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure.

The full extent of the damage to Yandex's supercomputers, which are used for artificial intelligence research, is not yet known. The company has not said how many customers were directly affected. The situation remains unstable, and further disruptions are possible as repairs continue.

What should affected users and businesses do?

Yandex has advised cloud customers to consider alternative recovery plans, including moving services to other providers. Businesses relying on Yandex Cloud should review their disaster recovery and business continuity plans. Users of Yandex apps and services should be aware that outages may continue and look for updates from the company.

What happens next?

The Russian government is likely to invest more in protecting digital infrastructure. The attacks have highlighted the risks of relying on a single cloud provider and the potential for physical attacks to disrupt online services at scale. The situation is still developing, and more information may emerge as repairs progress and authorities investigate.