Ukrainian drones hit Yandex data centers, disrupting rides, maps, and payments in Russia

Plenty of Russians reached for their phones this week to hail a car, pay for something, or find a route across town. Many got an outage instead. Yandex’s ride-hailing, navigation, and payment services in Russia were disrupted after Ukrainian drones struck the company’s data centers. The attacks mark a significant expansion of Ukraine’s retaliatory campaign against Russian digital infrastructure. Three sites, three strikes The strikes unfolded over four days in October 2026. Drones hit a Yandex facility in Sasovo on October 8, one in Kaluga on October 9, and another in Vladimir on October 11. Two of the data centers were shut down completely, while the third had key modules disabled. Yandex operates five primary data centers in Russia. At least three of them were affected by the strikes. Yandex Go, the company’s ride-hailing service, faced widespread outages. So did Yandex Pay and the company’s navigation tools. Yandex reported that its advanced supercomputers, which are essential for training AI models, were housed at the targeted sites. The affected machines include systems named Lyapunov, Chervonenkis, and Galushkin. Markets registered the hit. Yandex’s stock fell approximately 4...