On the night of October 11, drones struck a Yandex data center in Vladimir, Russia, triggering a large-scale fire at the facility. The company reported that the data center had completely ceased operations, while users in Russia and abroad experienced widespread disruptions to taxi services, online payments, and other applications.
This was reported by ASTRA, which conducted an open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysis of photographs from the scene and collected accounts from users.
According to the outlet, the attack targeted a Yandex data center located in the Energetik neighborhood of Vladimir.
Photographs submitted by ASTRA readers show a large fire and thick smoke. Local residents said the smoke spread across much of the city’s Leninsky district.
One eyewitness also submitted a photograph that they claimed captured the moment of the strike and an explosion at the data center.
Yandex confirmed that the facility in Vladimir had completely shut down following the drone attack. According to the company, no injuries were reported.
Earlier, Yandex had reported a major technical outage and a power supply disruption in its ru-central1-a availability zone.
According to ASTRA, the attack caused disruptions to more than 80 company services, including Yandex Music, Yandex Smart Home, and many others.
Taxi services were among the hardest hit.
Users were unable to book rides in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Perm, Krasnoyarsk, Vladivostok, Ulan-Ude, Yekaterinburg, and other Russian cities.
Similar problems were reported abroad, including in Serbia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Armenia, where Yandex services also operate.
Passengers were shown messages indicating that no vehicles were available, even though drivers were on duty.
Meanwhile, taxi drivers complained that they could not log into their accounts or were experiencing navigation failures.
“The taxi drivers’ app isn’t working. They can’t even log into their accounts, and those who haven’t been logged out are experiencing navigation problems. Yandex support for drivers is unavailable,” one taxi driver said.
According to him, representatives of taxi fleets also confirmed the problems.
In Rostov-on-Don, local residents reported that taxi services had effectively stopped operating, including those of local providers. Some passengers had to look for passing cars directly on the streets.
According to the outlet Ostorozhno, Novosti, the Yandex Pro application, used by taxi drivers and couriers, stopped working entirely.
The disruptions also affected the company’s internal systems, including its technical support service.
“We have a special program, and it’s gone down, so our work systems aren’t functioning. The funniest thing is that I can’t even submit a bug report,” one employee said.
In addition, ASTRA readers reported problems with the applications of the Fix Price and Magnit retail chains.
Due to an outage affecting the Yandex Pay payment service, some users said they had lost access to associated banking services and were unable to access their money.
The company said it was continuing to assess the condition of the damaged infrastructure. It remains unclear when the equipment at the data centers will be fully operational again.
According to ASTRA, this was the third attack on Yandex data centers in October.
On October 8, a data center in Sasovo, Ryazan region, was struck. The following day, October 9, an attack was reported on a similar facility in Kaluga.
Following the earlier attacks, the company added drone strikes to its list of force majeure events that could exempt it from liability for service disruptions.
