Ukrainian Drone Strike Shuts Down Major Yandex Data Center in Vladimir
A Ukrainian drone strike completely shut down a major Yandex data center in Vladimir, marking the third facility hit in days and causing widespread service outages across Russia.
The Russian technology and AI company Yandex announced that a Ukrainian drone strike hit its infrastructure in the Vladimir region, resulting in the complete shutdown of its data center. According to the company, no one was injured, but several services remain unavailable to users. This marks the third major data center of the company to be shut down in recent days.
Operations have been completely suspended, Yandex stated in a Telegram message regarding the strike on the Vladimir center. The company added that it is working to restore operations. Two previous attacks occurred on Thursday in Sasovo, southeast of Moscow, and on Friday in the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow. Yandex reported that Ukrainian drones struck the Kaluga center, partially shutting it down. The Sasovo center, which housed two of the three supercomputers used to develop the company's artificial intelligence model, was knocked offline by a Ukrainian strike.
Impact on Digital Infrastructure
Yandex is considered the Google of Russia, handling a large portion of network traffic and various tools utilized by users across the country. The impact on the data centers has tangible consequences. According to Cloudflare, bot traffic from the Yandex network plummeted to just 0.4% of the peak HTTP requests recorded over the previous two weeks. Initially, traffic dropped to about 57% on October 8, coinciding with the Sasovo attack.
According to Yandex Cloud's status report, at least 84 services are currently inactive. Internet monitoring firm NetBlocks reported that network traffic dropped to 30% for Yandex Cloud and 63% for Yandex LLC. Among the services affected by the strikes in Sasovo and Kaluga were the company's AI chatbot, financial services, and smart home devices.
Reactions and Political Context
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the strike on Yandex and the subsequent drop in bot traffic on social media. In a speech at the Warsaw Security Forum, he remarked that online spaces felt noticeably clearer and less toxic following the cyber and physical infrastructure disruptions.
"When we started responding to Russia’s operation against our data centers, and when our strikes reached Yandex’s data centers, it suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social media platforms," Zelenskyy stated. "A lot of people noticed it. There was less hate, less division, and fewer provocations. Because there were fewer bots."
Russia and Ukraine have increasingly targeted each other's critical infrastructure in recent months as the conflict enters its fifth year. Kyiv stated that it targets facilities generating revenue for Moscow's war machine, noting that the strikes on Yandex could force Russia to redirect resources toward infrastructure repairs.
The Sunday strike occurred hours after US President Donald Trump demanded that Ukraine halt its attacks on Russian oil refineries so that Moscow could supply more diesel to the global market.
