Ukraine’s Strikes on Yandex Data Centers, Explained

Key Points:

• A series of drone attacks targeted Yandex's data centers near Moscow, causing significant damage and widespread disruptions to the company's digital services, which millions of Russians rely on daily.
• Kyiv has claimed responsibility for the attacks, framing them as retaliation for Russian strikes on Ukrainian data centers, marking a new phase in Ukraine's campaign to undermine Russia's economy by targeting critical infrastructure.
• The outages affected not only Yandex's services, such as its browser, maps, payment systems, and popular apps like Yandex Go, but also impacted other major Russian companies using Yandex's cloud services, as well as users in neighboring countries.
• Yandex is working to restore its services, but full recovery and infrastructure repair could take up to six months; meanwhile, Russian officials, including the Digital Development Minister, are coordinating efforts to protect data centers from future attacks.
• The attacks have heightened concerns about digital and economic security in Russia, with no public comment yet from President Putin, while Yandex reassures users that financial data remains safe despite service interruptions.