Engineers at Yandex are working around the clock to restore services after Ukrainian drone strikes hit three of the company's five Russian datacenters between October 7 and 9, according to a report published by The Register on October 12, 2026. The attacks left payment services offline, cloud connectivity at a fraction of normal levels, and users unable to access their funds. Yandex, often called "Russia's Google," offers search, maps, AI assistants, and digital payment services comparable to Google Pay and Apple Pay.
The strikes began overnight on October 7-8, seriously damaging Yandex's Sasovo datacenter and forcing a complete shutdown, according to the report. Ukrainian drones struck again on the morning of October 9, targeting the Kaluga datacenter and taking part of its infrastructure offline. A third strike hit the Vladimir site on Sunday morning, October 9, which supports Yandex Pay, the company's digital payments platform that allows users to make purchases, pay in installments, and split bills. Internet monitoring organization Netblocks reported that Yandex Cloud's network connectivity stood at 30 percent of normal levels on October 11. 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 down.
Dima Pirogov, head of Yandex's fintech division, confirmed via Telegram on Sunday morning that users' money is safe but services remain offline a day later. "We can't give you a precise timeline for the restoration yet, but we promise: we won't stop until the service is back online," Pirogov wrote. The company's status page lists widespread outages across Yandex Cloud, its public cloud platform, following the attacks. In its most recent update, the company said the technical support team is receiving an increased number of requests and response times may be longer, recommending that customers "use alternative sites for hosting and reserving resources."
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said the drone attacks were a response to Russia's own strikes, which had targeted datacenters in Kyiv, according to the report. The BBC reported that in September, Russian drone strikes hit a business center in the capital city, killing four people and damaging a datacenter, which resulted in around 100,000 households losing internet access. The attacks led to other knock-on effects, such as public transport boards not displaying information in Lutsk. Kyiv's attack on the Vladimir site on Sunday morning came hours after controversial comments from US president Donald Trump, who accused Zelensky of wanting "to make problems for the world" by continuing to attack Russian oil refineries. Zelensky was referring to a deal between Trump and Putin to release diesel from Russia to the US and the rest of the world.
Later that day, the US president 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. The escalating tit-for-tat attacks on civilian infrastructure highlight how modern warfare increasingly targets the digital backbone that supports everyday financial transactions and cloud services. When critical payment platforms go dark for days, the cascading effects ripple far beyond technology companies into the daily lives of ordinary people who suddenly can't buy groceries or pay bills.