Ukrainian attacks on data centres of tech giant Yandex have thrown key facets of Russian daily life into turmoil, disrupting services ranging from email and taxi apps to dating sites and even electronic key fobs for Moscow apartment buildings. Ukraine has severely damaged three of Yandex's six data centres in the past week, wreaking havoc in a country whose tech ecosystem is centred around one vast, state-aligned company.
Launched as a search engine in 1997, Yandex has become Russia's answer to Google, Uber, Amazon and Open AI rolled into one. Thousands of businesses depend on its infrastructure, meaning the strikes have hit not only Yandex services but reams of unrelated companies. Kyiv said the attacks were in retaliation for Moscow striking Ukraine's data centres. But the fallout in Russia has been far greater, exposing vulnerabilities created by the Kremlin's long-term drive to centralise and control the IT sector. Yandex was forcibly sold in 2024 to investors tied to President Vladimir Putin.
Russians have struggled to access their Yandex emails, open work files or book taxis. In some cities, timetables disappeared from bus stop displays. Residents of many Moscow apartment blocks found themselves unable to enter shared courtyards because the barrier gates relied on Yandex infrastructure. Users of Yandex Pay awoke to find account balances vanished, though Yandex insisted "the money is safe".
Yandex's ecosystem relied on six data centres, two of which were shut down completely by the attacks. The company has not said how long repairs will take. A person close to management said they hoped to "quickly" restore functionality, though a return to full capacity would take several months.
Source: Financial Times Companies · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing