Russia’s Yandex Under Fire as Drones Hit Third Data Center in Four Days

Russia’s technology giant Yandex has suffered its third reported drone strike in just four days, with an attack on a major data center in Vladimir on October 11 triggering a fire, shutting down operations, and disrupting dozens of digital services across Russia.

According to OSINT monitoring channel Exilenova+ on October 11, drones targeted the Yandex facility in Russia’s Vladimir region overnight, with footage circulating online showing a fire at the site. Yandex subsequently confirmed that the data center had been taken offline following the attack.

The disruption reportedly affected more than 80 Yandex Cloud services, including computing infrastructure, databases, data storage systems, and artificial intelligence tools such as the YandexGPT API.

Popular consumer services were also affected, including the Alice voice assistant, Yandex Music, Telemost video conferencing, and Yandex Smart Home. The attack also disrupted electricity supplies beyond the facility itself.

Vladimir regional governor Alexander Avdeyev confirmed that drones had struck infrastructure outside the city, causing a fire and forcing two electrical substations offline. Approximately 5,000 residents were left without power.

The targeted facility is part of one of Yandex’s largest data center complexes, with a reported power capacity of approximately 56 megawatts.

In March 2026, the company commissioned an additional data center in Vladimir, designed to accommodate 2,800 server racks and provide 40 megawatts of power capacity.

The infrastructure supports Yandex Cloud, which provides businesses with computing resources, application hosting, data storage, and other digital services.

The latest attack follows two other reported strikes against Yandex infrastructure in less than a week.

On October 9, drones targeted one of the company’s largest data centers in Russia’s Kaluga region. The facility was designed to accommodate more than 3,800 server racks, with a projected power capacity of 63 megawatts.

Just a day earlier, on October 8, another Yandex data center in Sasovo, Ryazan region, was struck. That facility has a declared power capacity of 12 megawatts.

The three attacks have reportedly affected Yandex facilities across three separate Russian regions within four days, raising questions about the vulnerability of the country’s major digital infrastructure to drone strikes.

Help us understand what you already know

Join United24 audience survey