Ukrainian drone strikes on three data centers operated by Russia’s Yandex will reportedly take months to repair and have caused widespread disruption in everyday life across Russia and other countries the sprawling tech company operates in.
Major companies that use Yandex cloud computing services were affected, from food retail chains Magnit and Lenta to Lamoda’s network of fashion stores. Some people looking for sex or romance on the Twinby dating site were also disappointed.
Others were unable to travel with the Yandex Go taxi app or access their cash on Yandex Pay, both of which are used by tens of millions of Russians on a daily basis. The Yandex email service was also affected.
Although a number of key services were back in operation by October 12, the attacks highlighted a vulnerability that tech industry operators are now scrambling to address.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on October 13 that Yandex was “facing difficulties, and of course the matter is being discussed by the government.” He added that Yandex was taking “urgent steps to address the consequences of the attack."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the attacks on three Yandex sites were a response to Russian strikes on Ukrainian centers that affected Internet and mobile services in Ukraine.
Yandex is often described as “Russia’s Google,” though it actually sold off its search engine as part of an asset split in 2024 and provides other services, such as ride sharing and food deliveries, that Google does not.
Yandex has five data centers in Russia, according to a 2025 company report.
The three main ones are those hit: Sasovo, Kaluga, and Vladimir. On top of that there are smaller data centers in Mytischchi and Ivanteevka, both in the Moscow region. Yandex opened a second data center in Vladimir in 2025 which some media reports have counted separately, to make a nationwide total of six.
Serhiy Petrenko, former head of Yandex in Ukraine, told Current Time that “around 80 percent of Russia's data centers are located in Moscow and the surrounding Moscow region. So, of course, strikes there will continue and, naturally, will cause increasingly greater damage."
He added that Yandex had lost “half or more of its capacity” and “cannot continue operating with the same functionality.”
Other experts noted that Russia’s data centers were more centralized than Ukraine’s and thus more vulnerable.
Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher at Bremen University’s Center for East European studies, wrote on social media that 95 percent of Russia’s data centers were within range of Ukrainian drones.
Kyiv, he added, had “every capability to drive Russia back into the analogue era.”
A statement by Yandex after the first two attacks said: “Data centers are the iron heart of Yandex,” adding that “millions of users check traffic and plan routes, listen to music, watch movies, order groceries, and get answers to their questions. Our technology helps hundreds of thousands of companies run their businesses.”
It added that employees were “working day and night” to get things back on track. Russian media reported that this could take months, with Western sanctions restricting the supply of some necessary materials and equipment.
“In the last few days, the price of servers and data processing equipment in Russia has increased by 10-15 percent,” Eldar Murtazin, an analyst at Mobile Research Group, told independent online media outlet Fontanka.
The affected sites include the locations of three Yandex supercomputers, named Chervonenkis, Lyapunov, and Galushkin, although the company did not say if they were damaged.
Beyond Russia
Yandex is an international player that reported global revenues last year of some $11 billion, with offices in several former Soviet countries and ride-hailing services elsewhere in Europe and Africa.
Some of these services appear to have been affected after the Ukrainian strikes.
In Moldova, for instance, Yandex Go holds about 60 percent of the taxi market. On October 12-13, it notified users that it was experiencing technical issues without stating the cause.
The difficulties came as the company was also embroiled in a court battle over its refusal to disclose data about drivers using its taxi app. Court files obtained by RFE/RL’s Moldovan Service showed the case involved some $7.8 million in revenues, allegedly flowing directly into banks in Dubai and Kazakhstan without being taxed before leaving the country.
Delays and difficulties for drivers and passengers were likewise reported in Kazakhstan, raising wider concerns about the country’s dependence on Russian digital infrastructure and the potential vulnerability of essential services to disruptions caused by the war.
Similar problems were also reported in Armenia and Belarus, although RFE/RL’s Balkan Service found the taxi app to be fully functional in Serbia.
“This is a lesson for countries like Kazakhstan and Armenia, which are heavily dependent on Yandex” for taxi and mapping services, digital rights activist Sarkis Darbinian told Current Time.
“For Yandex this means there will be no expansion. On the contrary, its sphere of influence will shrink, and foreign users will turn away from services that have let them down."
