After Ukrainian strikes on three Yandex data centres, the company has still not restored them to full operation. Users felt the disruption to taxis, delivery services and cloud services not only in Russia, but also in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus.
Other Russian data centres are also under threat of attack – facilities on which the work of banks and businesses and the provision of state digital services depend. Most of these sites are concentrated in the European part of Russia, which Ukrainian drones reach without difficulty. The Ministry of Digital Development and the Ministry of Defence are discussing measures to protect digital infrastructure, but have not yet presented a concrete plan.
In brief:
- Between 8 and 11 October, Ukrainian drones attacked three Yandex data centres. It has not yet been possible to restore them to full operation.
- The outages affected taxis, deliveries, cloud services and other applications used by millions of Russians.
- The consequences of the attacks were felt in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and other countries. There, officials began talking about developing their own digital infrastructure.
- Around 200 data centres operate in Russia, most of them concentrated in the European part of the country.
- If the attacks continue, the work of other digital services, including state ones, could be at risk.
- The Ministry of Digital Development and the Ministry of Defence are discussing the protection of data centres, but no concrete plan has yet been presented.
Between 8 and 11 October 2026, Ukrainian drones attacked three Yandex data centres in Russia. The first strike hit a facility in the town of Sasovo in Ryazan region. It housed tens of thousands of servers and two of the company’s three supercomputers, which are used to develop and train artificial intelligence. After the attack a fire broke out on the site. The data centre suffered serious damage and stopped working entirely.
On 9 October drones attacked the data centre in Kaluga, knocking out several server modules and part of its computing capacity.
The third strike came on the night of 10 to 11 October, against the data centre in Vladimir. Its operation was also completely halted.
Yandex has confirmed damage to all three facilities, but cannot yet give a timeframe for their restoration. Moreover, the company is not certain that some of the equipment can be restored at all.
According to data published by Kommersant, the delivery of new servers to replace those damaged or destroyed could alone take up to six months. If the unique supercomputers were badly damaged, restoring the computing capacity could, industry experts estimate, stretch to a year and a half or two years.
Runet goes down
Yandex users quickly felt the consequences of the attacks. In various regions of Russia there were problems with ordering taxis through Yandex Go, with ordering deliveries, and with the work of Yandex Maps, Yandex Music, Yandex Mail and the Yandex Pay payment service. Some applications would not open, others worked with delays. The outages also affected the voice assistant Alisa: some artificial intelligence functions became unavailable, the neural network answered more slowly than usual, and smart home devices worked erratically.
The disruption to Yandex Cloud affected companies that use the platform to host websites, store data and run internal systems. Users of the property service Cian, for instance, could not open its website or its application. Astral, an electronic document management operator, warned clients of possible disruption to the filing of reports and the exchange of documents.
Access problems also arose on the websites of Russian Railways and St Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport. One bus operator in the Moscow region temporarily stopped selling tickets online altogether because of the data centre shutdown.
Echoes abroad
The consequences of the attacks on Yandex data centres reached far beyond Russia. Disruption to the company’s services occurred in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Belarus. Users could not order taxis or deliveries, while drivers and couriers could not accept or complete orders.
The authorities of Kazakhstan reacted most decisively. On 12 October the country’s Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development, Zhaslan Madiyev, announced the preparation of legislative changes intended to reduce the dependence of key digital services on foreign servers.
At the same time, the personal data of Kazakh users of Yandex is already stored inside the country. But part of the infrastructure that keeps the taxi and delivery services running is, by the ministry’s own admission, located abroad. That is why the damage to the data centres in Russia also affected the work of the services in Kazakhstan.
In Kyrgyzstan, the member of parliament Dastan Bekeshev proposed developing local taxi and delivery services, and also considering the possibility of hosting foreign companies’ infrastructure in the country.
Lithuania also responded to the attacks. On 12 October Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius proposed at the Warsaw Security Forum that Ukraine should carry out more strikes on Russian data centres.
“I think we should ask Mr Zelensky to hit more data centres in Russia, and that would perhaps help,” he said, answering a question about protecting European elections from Russian interference.
Earlier at the same forum, the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, commenting on the strikes on the Yandex data centres, said that after the attacks there were fewer Russian bots on social media, and with them less hatred, discord and provocation.
Who else is in the firing line?
Almost 200 data centres operate in Russia. Two thirds of the commercial market is controlled by five companies: RTK-TsOD (a subsidiary of Rostelecom), IXcellerate, Rosatom, DataPro and Selectel.
The bulk of the data centres are concentrated in the European part of Russia, and more than 80% of them are located in large cities.
Rostelecom occupies a special place in Russian digital infrastructure. Through its subsidiary RTK-TsOD it runs the largest network of commercial data centres in the country. According to the company, as of May 2026 that network comprised 26 facilities.
Rostelecom serves not only businesses but also key state information systems. Gosuslugi, the systems of Rosreestr and of the Social Fund of Russia, and the state cloud platform all depend on its infrastructure. These are the services through which Russians process documents, register property, receive benefits and use other state services.
The infrastructure of Rosatom hosts servers belonging to state organisations, telecommunications operators and industrial enterprises. It is used for storing and processing data and for running corporate information systems and cloud services. Part of the computing capacity is employed in the activity of Rosatom itself, including support for production and financial processes.
The Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia have their own computing infrastructure. The military department uses it to command troops and process data. Its key digital systems include the Unified Register of Military Records and the Register of Call-up Notices. The Ministry of Emergency Situations maintains the systems that warn of emergencies and coordinate rescue workers, among them the National Crisis Management Centre. The ministry is also linked to the Safe City complex, which combines video surveillance, public warning and incident monitoring.
Who will protect the data centres?
The Ukrainian strikes on the Yandex data centres have confronted the Russian authorities with the question of how to protect digital infrastructure from drones. Moving it abroad, as Ukraine has done, is harder for Russian companies. The Law on the Localisation of Personal Data requires that the main operations on databases of Russian users be carried out on the territory of the country at the time that data is collected.
On 12 October the Minister of Digital Development, Maksut Shadayev, told a meeting of the relevant State Duma committee that the Ministry of Digital Development, together with the Ministry of Defence, is already developing measures to protect data centres. According to the minister, the entire Russian IT industry has joined the effort to deal with the consequences of the attacks on Yandex. Shadayev also praised the company for its backup system, thanks to which some services kept working.
The minister did not, however, present a concrete protection plan. It is not yet known which data centres will receive additional protection, who will pay for these measures and when they will be put in place.
Some companies began preparing for attacks even before the October strikes. As the BBC Russian Service found, in the spring of 2026 VK planned to install metal frames and protective netting at one of its facilities. The cost of the work was estimated at 7.3 million roubles. At the end of September MegaFon announced tenders for the installation of protective structures against drones. Rosatom entities were also considering purchasing drone detection equipment and fitting out shelters for data centre staff.
Yandex, meanwhile, is trying to shield itself from the consequences of the attacks legally. The company has added a force majeure provision to its user agreement, listing among such circumstances military operations, drone attacks, missile strikes and explosions.
Author: Olga Siamashko
Official Russian and Belarusian sources cited in this text are for informational purposes only. Content from these sources may constitute disinformation or propaganda.
