Ukraine Drone Strikes Hit Three Yandex Datacenters, Yandex Pay Offline

Drone Strikes Hit Three Yandex Datacenters

Ukrainian drone strikes that began overnight on October 7-8 "seriously damaged" Yandex's Sasovo datacenter in Russia, leading to a total shutdown. Drones struck again on the morning of October 9, hitting the company's Kaluga datacenter and taking part of its infrastructure offline. Dima Pirogov, head of Yandex's fintech division, confirmed via Telegram on Sunday morning that a third strike targeted the Vladimir site, which supports Yandex Pay.

Yandex Pay Offline While Engineers Restore Services

A day later, Yandex Pay services remained offline, although Pirogov said users' money is safe. "I'm very sorry I can't tell you yet that everything is working again," he wrote. "The team continues to restore services and is checking every step." He said the company cannot give a precise timeline for restoration, but promised it will not stop until the service is back online, adding that reliability matters as much as speed when it comes to users' money.

Yandex Pay is the company's digital payments service, comparable to Apple Pay or Google Pay. Users can make online and in-store purchases, pay in installments, and split bills with friends and family. It is also integrated into online shopping experiences, while Yandex more broadly offers services similar to Google's.

Cloud Platform Operating in Limited Mode

Yandex said engineers are prioritizing the most-used services, with access to the Alice AI assistant, Mail, Maps, Search, and Taxi being restored, while other features remain offline. The company's status page lists widespread outages across Yandex Cloud, its public cloud platform.

Updates from the maintenance team describe partial availability despite the outage indicators, noting that some customers may be able to access features such as the Yandex Cloud Console and API, though availability remains inconsistent across the platform. In its most recent update, the company said the platform is still operating in a limited mode, that specialists continue restoration work around the clock, and that the increased number of support requests means response times can be longer. It recommended that customers use alternative sites for hosting and reserving resources.

Internet monitoring organization Netblocks reported that Yandex Cloud's network connectivity was at 30 percent of normal levels on October 11.

Attacks Follow Escalating Conflict Over Energy Infrastructure

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said the drone attacks were a response to Russia's own strikes on datacenters in Kyiv. The BBC reported that in September, Russian drone strikes targeted a business center in the Ukrainian capital, killing four people and damaging a datacenter, which left around 100,000 households without internet access. The attacks also had knock-on effects, such as public transport boards not displaying information in Lutsk.

The strike on the Vladimir site on Sunday morning came hours after US president Donald Trump accused Zelensky of wanting "to make problems for the world" by continuing to attack Russian oil refineries. Trump later said it was time for Ukraine to elect a new president after Zelensky said measures should not be taken that allow Russia to generate more revenue to fund its war, referencing a deal between Trump and Putin to release diesel from Russia to the US and the rest of the world. Later that day, Trump claimed Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an "energy ceasefire" to halt attacks on each other's energy infrastructure. Kyiv said it was unaware of the agreement before Trump announced it on his social media platform, but was willing to halt attacks on Russian energy infrastructure if Moscow reciprocated. Russia launched a missile attack on a Ukrainian power plant hours later.

Sources: Theregister