Russia's Yandex Hit by Third Drone Strike on Data Center in Four Days, Disrupting 80+ Cloud Services

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, underscoring the growing vulnerability of the country's critical digital infrastructure to aerial attacks.

According to OSINT monitoring channel Exilenova+, 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 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 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 impacted, including the Alice voice assistant, Yandex Music, Telemost video conferencing, and Yandex Smart Home.

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 as a result of the attack.

The latest strike follows two other reported attacks 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, a facility 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 affected Yandex facilities across three separate Russian regions within four days, raising serious questions about the resilience of the country's major digital infrastructure and the ability of operators to protect critical data center assets from drone strikes. The targeting of Yandex's cloud and AI infrastructure in particular highlights the increasing strategic importance of data centers in modern conflict scenarios, as well as the cascading impact that physical attacks on such facilities can have on both enterprise and consumer digital services.