Yandex reports service disruption after drone strikes hit two Russian data centres
The company says its Sasovo site is shut and part of its Kaluga facility is out of service. A cloud customer has reported losing access, while the full impact remains unclear.
Yandex said on Friday, October 9, that drone attacks had damaged two of its data centres in Russia, shutting its Sasovo facility and taking part of its Kaluga site out of service. The company is working to keep its digital services running, but has not said when the damaged equipment will be restored. A customer using its cloud service has separately reported losing access to an app and its backup database.
What Yandex says happened in Sasovo and Kaluga
In a statement dated October 9, Yandex said its Sasovo data centre was seriously damaged during the night of October 7 to 8 and had been completely shut down. A second attack hit its Kaluga data centre on Friday morning, leaving part of that site's infrastructure out of service. The company said emergency responders and its own specialists were working at both locations while it assessed the equipment.
Yandex said no employees were injured at either site. Kaluga Governor Vladislav Shapsha separately said nine people had been injured in drone attacks in the region, according to Meduza. His account did not identify the facilities where those injuries occurred, so the nine injuries cannot be attributed to the Yandex site on the available information.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy confirmed the Kaluga strike and described it as a response to Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centres, Reuters reported. Ukrainian arms maker Firepoint said its FP-1 one-way attack drones were used against the Kaluga facility. That description of the weapons comes from Firepoint; the available reporting does not independently establish the operational details of the strike.
Which Yandex services and customers have reported problems
Yandex said its data centres support services people use to plan routes, order groceries, listen to music, watch films and find information. It also supplies technology to businesses that use it to take orders and serve customers. The company said its teams were working around the clock to maintain services and help affected users and partners, while acknowledging that the work was difficult.
The effect extends beyond Yandex's own consumer products. Reuters reported that some online services had technical problems after the Sasovo shutdown, including the Russian Railways website. Meduza also reported disruption affecting the mobile operator MegaFon and several Russian media sites. Those reports identify affected services, but do not establish the total number of users or businesses unable to connect.
Alexander Savitsky, who runs the Pulse dating app, told Reuters that its 8,000 users had been unable to access it since Thursday. He said the company could not reach its backup database in Yandex Cloud and received an error when it tried to restore the service elsewhere. His account gives a specific example of the disruption facing a business customer; it does not show that every Yandex Cloud customer has the same problem.
Savitsky said there was no confirmation that Pulse had lost data. He told Reuters that the project represented three years of work and that the loss of access risked losing users' trust. Reuters also reported that Yandex had arranged with other cloud providers to help clients move data and services. Whether those arrangements have restored access for Pulse or other affected customers remains unreported.
What remains unknown about the damage and recovery
Yandex said it was still assessing the condition of its infrastructure and could not give a reliable timetable for bringing equipment back into operation. It has confirmed a complete shutdown at Sasovo and a partial infrastructure outage at Kaluga, but has not provided a full account of which services remain unavailable or how many customers are affected.
The Sasovo facility houses two of the three supercomputers used to develop Yandex's AI model, Reuters reported. Neither Yandex's statement nor the available reporting says whether those machines were damaged. Their presence at the site explains why the condition of its equipment matters beyond the immediate service interruptions, but it does not establish any lasting effect on the company's AI work.
Yandex shares fell by more than 4% on the Moscow Exchange after news of the second strike, Reuters reported. For customers, the more immediate question is when services and cloud access will recover. Yandex has promised further updates as it learns more about the damaged facilities; its October 9 statement supplied no restoration date.
Sources and context
- What is happening to our data centers, the iron heart of YandexYandex
- Russian search engine Yandex struggles after Ukrainian strikes on data centresBBC News
- Ukraine hits second major tech site, expanding range of targets inside RussiaReuters (republished by MarketScreener)
- Several modules of Yandex’s data center in Russia completely knocked out by Ukrainian drone strikeMeduza
AI-assisted article checked against the listed sources. NewsJaws did not conduct interviews or attend the reported events.
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