Russian Internet Outages Follow Drone Strikes on Tech Giant

In late September, Russia launched drone and missile attacks against Ukrainian telecom networks and data centers. These attacks cut off internet service for up to 100,000 households in Kyiv. However, Ukraine soon responded with its own drone strikes against Russian facilities. Ukrainian drones attacked three major data centers owned by Yandex, which is Russia's largest tech company.

The first strike happened on October 8 in the Sasovo region, southeast of Moscow. This facility housed two powerful supercomputers that Yandex used to train AI models. On October 9, a second drone strike hit a 63-megawatt data center in the Kaluga region. Finally, on October 11, a third attack forced Yandex to shut down its center in Vladimir. This third location held another supercomputer named Galushkin.

These destroyed data centers created major outages across Russia. Russian citizens suddenly lost access to banking apps, payment tools, and online shopping platforms. Navigation maps, email, video streaming, and food delivery services stopped working properly. Furthermore, large grocery chains and appliance stores that relied on Yandex cloud computing suffered system crashes.

Pro-Kremlin commentators posted warnings about this crisis. They argued that Russia's digital economy is too centralized. Because Yandex controls about 70 percent of the search market and hosts vital infrastructure, damaging a few physical sites disrupts the entire country. In contrast, Ukraine uses a decentralized network that resists attacks more effectively. Additionally, Russian laws passed in 2019 prevent companies from moving their digital infrastructure to foreign servers. This rule makes it almost impossible for Yandex to build backup systems quickly.