Yandex Struggles to Keep Services Online After Ukrainian Drone Strikes

Fri Oct 09 2026 19:35:30 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

Two of Yandex's data centres hit by Ukrainian drones have forced the Russian tech giant to battle for continuity, impacting search, AI and smart‑home services.

Russian search engine Yandex says its services are suffering after Ukrainian drone attacks on two of its five data centres – one in Sasovo, the other in Kaluga – over the past 48 hours. Yandex, often dubbed Russia's Google, operates the country’s most popular search engine and a range of consumer apps used by millions. The strikes are part of a broader pattern of infrastructure retaliation, with Ukrainian forces striking Russian data centres in response to Russian attacks on Ukraine. Yandex’s operations at both sites are severely disrupted, bringing AI chatbot functions and smart‑home device controls offline, though teams are working day and night to restore services. The damage could force Russia to divert resources to repair critical data‑hosting infrastructure, raising concerns about the resilience of vital digital services amid the ongoing conflict.

Yandex Struggles to Keep Services Online After Ukrainian Drone Strikes

Russian search engine Yandex has been fighting to keep its services online after two of its five data centres were struck by Ukrainian drones in the past two days.

Yandex, often dubbed Russia's Google, runs the country’s best‑selling search engine as well as a food‑ordering and taxi app used by tens of millions.

According to the company, its Sasovo hub in the Ryazan region suffered serious damage overnight into Thursday, leaving the data centre completely offline. A second hit occurred in the Kaluga region on Friday morning, taking part of that site’s infrastructure out of service.

Yandex said the data centres are critical for normal operation and it is currently very difficult to predict when the services will return. Its teams are working "day and night" to keep services running, but it is a complex task.

The company confirmed that no employees had been injured in the attacks. Nine people were reported injured in a separate drone strike on infrastructure in Kaluga, according to the regional governor.

While Yandex is still unable to provide a precise estimate of downtime, it has already notified state news agency Tass that some of its AI chatbot functions are temporarily unavailable and that its smart‑home devices may also be affected.

Yandex previously described its Kaluga data centre as one of Russia’s largest, covering 130,000 square metres and consuming electricity equivalent to 220,000 UK households each year. The Sasovo centre hosts two of three supercomputers used to develop the company’s AI model, though it is unclear whether they survived the attack.

Ukraine’s defence ministry confirmed the attacks and said they could "force Russia to divert resources to repair the damaged capacity." President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv was responding to similar Russian strikes on Ukrainian data centres in a "mirror‑like" fashion.

Russia has justified its strikes on Ukrainian sites by claiming they are used by the Ukrainian military intelligence, while Ukraine accuses Russia of deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure.

With winter approaching, Moscow has stepped up attacks on energy infrastructure, mirroring patterns seen in previous years of the full‑scale invasion that began in 2022.