Are three Yandex data centre hits disrupting Russian cloud and AI services?

The short version

• Yandex confirmed its Vladimir data centre is offline and operating in emergency mode following a drone strike.
• Earlier attacks on sites in Ryazan and Kaluga damaged infrastructure and forced two facilities to close.
• Users report issues with email, taxis, food delivery and smart home devices relying on Yandex servers.

The details

Overnight on Sunday, Ukrainian drones struck a Yandex data centre in the Vladimir region, according to The Record. This was the third facility hit in a single week. The company stated the site has shut down completely and remaining infrastructure is unstable. The platform is currently running in emergency mode. This latest attack follows strikes on two other data centres located in the Ryazan and Kaluga regions earlier that same week.

The first incident occurred overnight between 7 and 8 October, when drones hit a facility in Sasovo, Ryazan region. The strike sparked a fire and forced a complete shutdown of that site. A second attack on 9 October damaged infrastructure at a Kaluga data centre. Yandex confirmed no employees were injured in the Kaluga incident and emergency responders were on site. The combined capacity of these three targeted facilities is approximately 115 megawatts.

The context

These attacks have disrupted Yandex Cloud, which provides computing infrastructure to thousands of businesses. The company’s own services and third-party platforms dependent on its servers are also affected. According to the Russian internet watchdog, users experienced problems accessing email, booking taxis, ordering food and making payments via Yandex Pay. Additionally, the Alice voice assistant and connected smart home devices stopped working in some households.

More than a dozen third-party services hosted on Yandex infrastructure were reportedly affected. These included retailers, internet providers, an online psychotherapy service, fitness businesses and the Russian segment of TikTok. The Vladimir facility houses Galushkin, a supercomputer considered among the most powerful in Russia. The Sasovo site reportedly housed two of Yandex’s three AI training supercomputers. Yandex has not disclosed whether any supercomputers were damaged.

Next steps

Organisations should monitor service status pages for any providers hosted on Yandex Cloud. Security teams should review backup connectivity options in case primary servers become unreachable. Businesses dependent on Yandex payments or delivery APIs should prepare manual contingency plans.

What to do and how to stay safe: Yandex

• Verify the status of any cloud services or APIs hosted on Yandex infrastructure before relying on them for critical operations.
• Ensure you have offline backups or alternative service providers for essential functions like payments, communications and data storage.
• Monitor official communications from your service provider for updates on infrastructure stability and expected restoration timelines.
• Review your disaster recovery plans to ensure they account for physical damage to major data centre regions in your supply chain.

Step-by-step guide: Shared Responsibility Model: 6 Misreadings That Leave Cloud Security Gaps

General security guidance from the Honeypot Daily newsroom. It is not confirmed advice from the organisations named in this story.

Frequently asked questions

Which Yandex data centres have been hit by drones?

Facilities in the Vladimir, Ryazan and Kaluga regions have been targeted, with the Vladimir site shutting down completely.

Are any Yandex supercomputers confirmed damaged?

No, Yandex has not disclosed whether any of its supercomputers, including Galushkin, were damaged in the attacks.

What third-party services were affected?

Retailers, internet providers, fitness businesses, an online psychotherapy service and the Russian segment of TikTok were affected.