Ukraine knocked out key Yandex data centers. The fallout is being felt across Russia.

Key Points:

• Ukraine has targeted three Yandex data centers in Sasovo, Kaluga, and Vladimir as retaliation for Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centers, causing significant damage and halting operations at two facilities.
• The strikes have led to widespread outages affecting Yandex services such as Mail, Pay, Disk, and Go, as well as disruptions to other Russian websites and services, with users both inside and outside Russia reporting problems.
• Yandex has taken measures to restore services, including moving data to other cloud providers and limiting downloads, but full recovery is uncertain, especially for the damaged supercomputers used for AI training.
• The attacks have caused financial and operational challenges for Yandex, including increased costs for equipment replacement and infrastructure protection, which may raise cloud service prices; the company’s stock also fell following the strikes.
• Russian authorities and media have responded with limited commentary; while some officials discuss enhancing data center defenses, the Kremlin remains silent, and state propagandists have publicly lamented the disruptions.