Ukrainian drones halt Yandex data center in Vladimir, disrupting services across Russia

A third strike on Yandex in days

Drones hit a Yandex data center in Sasovo, Ryazan oblast, on Thursday, and another in Kaluga oblast on Friday, according to rmf24.pl. The attack on Vladimir overnight from 10 to 11 October is the third such incident in a few days, and rmf24.pl notes that all three sites lie near Moscow. RBK-Ukraine, cited by rmf24.pl, adds that Russia has also attacked Ukrainian data centers, with Kyiv's Omega Telecom knocked offline after one strike and the dline.ua data center destroyed earlier.

Damage and outages in Vladimir

Ukrainian drones damaged the infrastructure of the Yandex data center in Vladimir, a city east of Moscow according to rmf24.pl, and its operations were fully halted. The company said no one was injured. Footage of the strike was published by Ukrainian monitoring channels on Telegram, while Russian Telegram channels reported that residents of Vladimir heard explosions during the night.

Several Yandex services stopped working in different regions of Russia, including Siberia. Users reported problems with Yandex Go, Yandex Pay, Yandex Eats, Yandex Pro and the Alisa assistant, and rmf24.pl also lists Yandex Music, the Telemost video calls service and the Yandex Dom smart home system among the affected services. In Rostov-on-Don, readers of the Telegram channel 'Ostorozhno, novosti' reported that local taxi services had stopped working.

Power cut and evacuation

Vladimir Oblast Governor Alexander Avdeev said that two substations supplying electricity to about 5,000 people were knocked out in the attack. About an hour later, power had been restored to 80%, while heating and water had been fully restored. Residents of houses near the targeted facility were evacuated.

Strikes on Sochi and Odesa

Drones also attacked Sochi. The operational headquarters of Krasnodar Krai said drone fragments fell on the airport grounds, where one administrative building caught fire, and debris also landed on private homes and hotels. No one was hurt. In Odesa, a Russian attack damaged a residential building, destroying three apartments and setting the roof on fire. Firefighters put out the blaze, and Ukraine's State Emergency Service reported no casualties, with its psychologists helping residents of the building.

Air defence claims on both sides

Russia's defence ministry said that its air defences downed 479 Ukrainian drones overnight over 17 regions of Russia and Crimea. Ukraine's Air Force said Russia launched 116 attack drones at Ukraine overnight, including Shahed and Gerbera types and Parodiya decoys, 95 of them jet-powered. Preliminary data as of 8:30 showed 94 drones shot down or suppressed, 74 of them jet-powered, with 10 drones hitting seven locations and debris falling in nine places.

Robert 'Madyar' Brovdi, commander of Ukraine's unmanned systems forces, said that Ukrainian drone operators hit 2,370 targets on 10 October. The unmanned systems forces also claimed in a report that more than 24,000 targets were hit in the first ten days of October.