TL;DR: Ukrainian drone strikes hit three of Yandex’s six data centers in Russia within a week, knocking two offline entirely and disrupting cloud services, payments, taxis, food delivery, email and smart home devices for many users. Beyond the war itself, the episode is a stark reminder for businesses everywhere: data centers are physical infrastructure, and relying on a single cloud provider, even one spread across several sites, carries real risk.
What happened
According to The Record by Recorded Future News, the attacks unfolded over several days in October:
| Date (2026) | Location | Reported impact |
|---|---|---|
| Overnight October 7–8 | Sasovo, Ryazan region | Fire; facility shut down. Reportedly houses two of Yandex’s three AI supercomputers. |
| October 9 | Kaluga region | Part of the infrastructure damaged; no employees injured, per Yandex |
| Weekend of October 10–11 | Vladimir | Facility shut down completely; houses the Galushkin supercomputer |
The three facilities have a combined capacity of about 115 megawatts, The Record reported. After the third strike, Yandex said the data center had “shut down completely” and that its platform was “operating in emergency mode.” The company has not said whether any of its supercomputers were damaged.
A long list of disrupted services
Yandex is often compared to a combination of Google, Uber and Amazon in Russia, and the outages showed how much depends on it. According to Russia’s internet regulator, cited by The Record, users had trouble with:
- Email and other Yandex consumer services
- Booking taxis and ordering food
- Payments through Yandex Pay
- The Alice voice assistant and connected smart home devices
- More than a dozen third-party services hosted on Yandex Cloud, including retailers, internet providers, fitness businesses and the Russian segment of TikTok
Yandex Cloud served roughly 64,000 customers as of mid-2026, according to the company’s financial disclosures, but Yandex has not said how many were affected.
Context: data centers are now targets on both sides
The strikes did not come out of nowhere. The Record notes that Russian attacks in late September damaged at least six Ukrainian data centers and telecom facilities belonging to major providers, and a strike on September 23 cut fixed-line internet for about 100,000 households in and around Kyiv, according to Ukrainian officials. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the attacks on Russian data centers as retaliation. Moscow has claimed that Ukrainian data centers were supporting the country’s armed forces.
For years, discussions of digital infrastructure risk focused on cyberattacks. This conflict shows that physical attacks on the buildings that hold the cloud are now part of modern warfare.
How Yandex is responding
- Yandex said it is very difficult to give a timeline for restoring equipment at the data centers.
- It advised cloud customers to consider alternative recovery plans rather than relying only on switching between parts of Yandex Cloud’s own infrastructure.
- Russian state media reported agreements with rival providers Selectel, K2Cloud and VK Cloud to help affected customers move data and services faster.
- Yandex updated its terms of service to exclude liability for failing to meet obligations because of drone strikes and other attacks, which could limit customers’ ability to seek compensation.
- Russia’s digital development minister said his ministry is working with the defense ministry on better protection for Yandex facilities.
The lessons for every business that uses the cloud
Most companies will never face drone strikes on their provider’s facilities. But fires, floods, power failures and major outages happen everywhere. The Yandex case highlights several principles that apply far from any war zone.
1. Multiple zones are not the same as multiple providers
Cloud providers spread workloads across availability zones and regions so that one failed site does not take everything down. That works for isolated failures. When several sites belonging to one provider fail at once, or when the provider itself has a systemic problem, customers that live entirely inside that provider can be stuck. Yandex’s own advice to look beyond switching within its infrastructure makes the point.
2. Test your disaster recovery plan
A backup you have never restored is a hope, not a plan. Define how much data you can afford to lose and how long you can be offline, then rehearse recovery to confirm you can meet those targets.
3. Keep copies of critical data outside your main provider
Even if you don’t run full multi-cloud systems, regular exports or backups stored with a second provider or on your own hardware give you options in a crisis.
4. Read the fine print
Yandex’s change to exclude liability for attacks is a reminder that service-level agreements and terms can limit compensation exactly when you need it most. Know what your provider is and isn’t promising.
5. Map your hidden dependencies
Many businesses discovered they depended on Yandex indirectly, through payment providers, delivery platforms or hosting partners. Ask your critical vendors where they host and what their backup plans are.
A quick resilience checklist
- List systems you can’t operate without.
- Note which provider and region each one depends on.
- Confirm backups exist outside that provider.
- Run a restore test at least once a year.
- Document a manual fallback for the most critical processes, such as taking orders or payments.
The bottom line
The strikes on Yandex are first and foremost part of a war, with real consequences for millions of ordinary users. For the wider technology world, they underline a hard truth: the cloud runs in buildings, and buildings can be lost. Resilience depends less on any single provider’s promises and more on whether you have a tested plan for when your provider goes dark.
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