Drone attack takes another Yandex data center offline
No casualties were reported.
Image via Reuters
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- Yandex shut down its Vladimir data center after a drone attack damaged infrastructure.
- The company says Yandex Cloud continues to run with limited functionality.
- Three Yandex data centers were damaged in four days as Ukraine targets Russian tech infrastructure.
- Ukraine says it is responding after Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centers.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
“Russian Google” Yandex said on Sunday that its data center in the Vladimir region was forced to shut down following a drone attack, the third to hit the company's facilities in four days as Ukraine targets Russian tech infrastructure.
No casualties were reported in the latest attack, according to the company. Independent Russian outlet ASTRA shared photos showing a fire and thick smoke over Vladimir following the drone attack.
“As a result of the UAV attack, the infrastructure of Yandex’s data center in Vladimir was damaged. The data center’s operation has been completely suspended. There are no casualties; the relevant services are already on site and dealing with the consequences,” Yandex said in a service alert.
“We consider the remaining resource configuration to be unstable. The platform’s operating mode is emergency — we recommend using any other alternative disaster recovery plans,” the company added.
Yandex said it is working to restore its systems, but the Yandex Cloud platform “continues to operate with limited functionality.” This means businesses relying on Yandex Cloud for computing infrastructure or data storage could also be affected.
This marks the third attack damaging Yandex’s data centers in four days. Yandex is one of Russia's largest technology companies, with a market capitalization of approximately $16 billion as of October 2026. Its search engine also accounts for roughly 70% of the Russian market.
On October 8th, a drone strike caused a fire at Yandex's Sasovo data center, southeast of Moscow, forcing it to shut down. It houses two of the three supercomputers used to develop the company’s AI model, although it’s unclear whether the machines were damaged.
On October 9th, another Yandex facility in the Kaluga region was damaged by Ukrainian drones and was partly forced offline.
After the Sasovo strike, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the country responds “in mirror-like fashion”, adding: “You all know, they have been hitting and continue to hit our data centres. We are responding. I can’t share all the details.”
Earlier, the Kremlin ordered data center operators to prepare for upcoming drone attacks as Ukraine expanded its long-range drone campaign against Russian infrastructure.
