Ukrainian drones hit three of Yandex's five data centers, halting Vladimir site

Three sites hit in four days

Ukrainian drones struck three of the five data centers operated by Yandex, the Russian internet company often compared to Google, between 8 and 11 October. The first strike, on Thursday, 8 October, hit the Sasovo site in Ryazan oblast, which housed two supercomputers. The Kaluga facility was hit the next day, Friday, 9 October, and on Sunday, 11 October drones struck the Vladimir data center, more than 170 kilometres east of Moscow. Yandex had complained that the first two attacks significantly hampered its work, and it later disclosed that operations at the Vladimir center had been completely halted. The company runs a search engine that holds about 72% of the Russian search market, along with a browser, a cloud service, smart-home services and Russia's largest taxi app.

Services hit across Russia

Kyiv Independent reports that about 80 platforms and services face serious problems, from the Alisa voice assistant and the Telemost teleconferencing app to AI clients and streaming services. External sites such as online shops and banking apps that rely on Yandex services are affected too. On Sunday, 11 October, Yandex's fintech head Dima Pirogov wrote on X that another data center hosting the company's services had failed, leaving many users unable to check balances, pay or transfer money. Ukrainian weapons maker Fire Point, which produces many of the long-range drones used in such attacks, answered with a mocking question asking whether he had tried switching it off and on again. Der Tagesspiegel reports that Russians had trouble using payment and taxi services in several regions, and at one point only about 30% of cloud connections reportedly worked. As of 12 October, Yandex Cloud is still running in emergency mode, with specialists working around the clock on repairs.

Bot traffic and the propaganda claim

Tom's Hardware reports that Yandex bot activity fell to about 57% of its two-week peak after the first attack and to 0.4% after two more. naTemat says analysts and internet users took a chart showing a 99.6% fall in bot traffic as proof that support for AfD, MAGA, Konfederacja and anti-Ukrainian narratives had dropped. naTemat argues the measured bots were the automatic crawlers Yandex's browser uses to index web pages, not the accounts spreading hate on X and Facebook, which did not fall silent. Several social media users nonetheless report that their own activity visibly declined.

Supercomputers and Kyiv's rationale

naTemat names three machines in the affected centers: Lapunov at 20.03 petaflops, Chervonenkis at 29.42 petaflops and Galushkin at 20.64 petaflops, and describes them as destroyed. The machines ran on AMD EPYC processors, NVIDIA A100 accelerators and InfiniBand networking, and were used to train neural networks and language models. Because of Western sanctions and a global shortage of AI chips, naTemat argues Russia cannot buy or import replacements for the destroyed accelerators.

After the first attack, President Zelensky said the strikes were a response to Russian attacks on data centers in Ukraine, which Russia began in late September. Onet notes that Kyiv could repeat strikes on the Kaluga, Vladimir and Sasovo sites, and that several other sites are on the list of potential targets.

Repairs and prices

Kommersant, citing an unnamed IT specialist, reports that supplying Yandex with replacement equipment will take several months, perhaps half a year, partly because of a memory shortage driven by the AI boom. Yandex will have to buy equipment through several channels, including abroad, to close the gap faster. Yandex has not yet given a date for rebuilding its infrastructure. The Insider reports that some Yandex Cloud services have already risen more than 16.6% after two tariff increases this year, and Kommersant expects server prices to climb further in the fourth quarter. Other data center operators have started buying equipment that protects against drone attacks, a cost that will also feed into service prices.