Russia’s technology and artificial intelligence company, Yandex, has announced the complete shutdown of its data centre in the Vladimir region following a drone attack that damaged its infrastructure and disrupted several digital services.
The company confirmed the incident on Sunday, October 11, 2026, stating that no injuries had been reported. Emergency services were deployed to the site as engineers began assessing the damage and exploring ways to restore operations. Yandex said the facility had been taken completely offline and warned customers that its remaining service capacity was unstable.
The shutdown has affected the availability of some Yandex services, with the company advising customers to activate their disaster-recovery plans while its systems operate in emergency mode. Yandex also warned that communication with technical support teams could experience disruptions as specialists continue investigating the incident.
Yandex, often described as “Russia’s Google,” operates one of the country’s most popular search engines and provides a wide range of digital services, including cloud computing, online mapping, music streaming, food delivery and taxi-booking applications. Its data centres also support the company’s growing artificial intelligence operations.
The latest incident marks the third reported attack on Yandex data centres within four days. On October 8, a drone attack damaged the company’s facility in Sasovo, in Russia’s Ryazan region, forcing it to suspend operations there. The facility houses tens of thousands of servers, including infrastructure used for artificial intelligence development.
On October 9, Yandex reported another drone strike targeting its data centre in the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow. The attack damaged parts of the facility and put several infrastructure modules out of service, adding to the pressure on the company’s digital operations.
The repeated attacks have raised concerns about the vulnerability of Russia’s technology infrastructure as the war between Russia and Ukraine increasingly extends to data centres and other critical digital facilities. Ukraine has previously accused Russia of targeting Ukrainian energy, telecommunications and data infrastructure.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said his country is responding to Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure. However, responsibility for individual incidents should be assessed using independently verified evidence.
The full extent of the damage to the Vladimir facility remains unclear, and Yandex has not provided a definite timeline for restoring normal operations. The company said it would continue assessing its infrastructure and provide further updates as more information becomes available.