Russian technology company Yandex says its data centre in Vladimir, east of Moscow, has completely suspended operations following a Ukrainian drone attack on Sunday. According to the BBC, the strike on 11 October was the third attack on the company’s facilities that week. Yandex confirmed damage to the site and said some of its services had become unavailable to users.
In a statement on Telegram quoted by the BBC, the company said nobody at the centre had been injured and that work was under way to restore connectivity. It did not give a date for resuming operations or describe the full extent of the damage.
Sunday’s strike followed attacks on two other Yandex facilities: in Sasovo on Thursday and Kaluga on Friday. The BBC reports that both centres also suspended operations. Yandex said its data centres were essential to the normal functioning of its services and that it was very difficult to predict when they could restart.
The disruption affects the technological infrastructure of a company whose services include food delivery and ride-hailing. Yandex confirmed that some services were unavailable but did not identify which ones had been affected. That does not establish that all of the company’s services had stopped working.
Separate dispute over refinery attacks
The attack on the data centre came amid a dispute over Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s fuel sector. According to the BBC, Donald Trump warned Ukraine against further attacks on Russian refineries several hours before Sunday’s strike. We also covered his position in our article on his warning against refinery attacks.
Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X on Sunday that Ukraine would be ready to stop attacking Russian refineries if Russia stopped attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure. This was a conditional declaration, not an announcement of an agreement or confirmation that strikes had stopped. Both politicians’ remarks concerned refineries and energy infrastructure, rather than any agreed ban on attacks on data centres.
