The attack and its effects

Yandex said on Sunday, 11 October, in a Telegram post that drones had damaged its data center in Vladimir, east of Moscow, and that operations there were completely halted. The company said no one was injured and that the platform could only run in emergency mode. Yandex said it was assessing the damage and could not yet give a date for restoring the equipment. Technical support may also be disrupted because specialists are busy repairing the damage. Ukrainian monitoring channels published footage of the strike, while Russian Telegram channels reported explosions overnight in Vladimir.

In its statement, Yandex described the attack in these words:

Following a drone attack, the infrastructure of the Vladimir data center (east of Moscow) was damaged. Activity of the data center has been completely interrupted.

Outages across Russia

Users reported problems with Yandex Go, Yandex Pay, Yandex Eats, Yandex Pro, the Alice voice assistant, Yandex Music, Telemost and Yandex Dom, with disruptions reported in several regions including Siberia. Readers of the Telegram channel Ostorozhno Novosti said taxi services had stopped working in Rostov-on-Don. The same channel reported ordering problems for Yandex Go in Serbia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia, where drivers also could not log into the app. Users also reported problems with Fix Price and Magnit, and some banking services faced access problems, according to the monitoring outlet ASTRA.

Power cut and evacuation

Vladimir Governor Alexander Avdeyev said that two substations supplying electricity to about 5,000 people had been switched off in the attack. About an hour later, power had been restored to 80%, and heat and water supply had been fully restored. Residents of houses near the attacked facility were evacuated. Yandex Cloud's ru-central1-a availability zone, which is physically located in this data center, also experienced power supply disruptions.

Third attack in a week

The Vladimir facility is the third Yandex data center hit in about a week. On 8 October a drone attack on the Yandex facility in Sasovo, Ryazan region, started a fire, and Mediafax reported that operations there were suspended for an indefinite period. On Friday, 9 October, drones damaged a data center in Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow, disabling several server modules. RMF24 noted that all these sites lie near Moscow, which it described as a sign of the threat to Russia's digital infrastructure.

Terms of service change

Yandex has also amended its user agreement. A version dated 10 October adds a force majeure section, which Dozhd TV drew attention to. The list covers combat operations and terrorist attacks, including those carried out with drones and missiles, and any consequences of the use, impact, fall, launch or triggering of weapons, military equipment or aircraft. It also includes shelling, explosions, martial law, forced evacuation and serious accidents at energy and communications facilities caused by external factors. Such circumstances release the parties from liability for failing to meet their obligations.

Strikes and reactions

The Russian Ministry of Defence said air defenses shot down 479 Ukrainian drones overnight over 17 Russian regions and Crimea. Ukraine's Air Force reported that Russia launched 116 attack drones overnight on 11 October, including Shahed drones, and that preliminary data at 8:30 showed 94 downed or suppressed. RBK-Ukraine reported that Russia has also struck Ukrainian data centers, with Omega Telecom in Kyiv knocked offline and the dline.ua data center destroyed. Speaking about the attacks on Russian infrastructure, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said:

We always respond in kind. Russia attacked and continues to attack our data centers.

Yandex has not yet given a date for restoring the Vladimir data center.