Ukrainian strikes disabled three Yandex data centers in Russia, sharply cutting bot traffic
Between October 8 and 11, 2026, Ukrainian strikes hit three large Yandex data centers in Russia — at Sasovo in Ryazan Oblast, near Kaluga, and at Vladimir — disabling supercomputers and forcing Yandex Cloud into emergency mode. The strikes disrupted a wide range of Russian consumer, logistics and financial services, and monitoring data showed automated bot traffic from the Yandex network collapsing from near its two-week maximum to a fraction of a percent before partially recovering.
Key points
- Ukraine struck three large Yandex data centers between October 8 and October 11, 2026, at Sasovo (Ryazan Oblast), near Kaluga, and at Vladimir.
- The October 9 hit on the 63 MW Grabtsevo CDC near Kaluga and the October 11 strike on the Vladimir CDC, where a fire destroyed the Galushkin supercomputer, fully halted those facilities.
- Disruptions cascaded to Yandex Cloud, Yandex Mail, Disk and Documents, T-Bank, Yandex Eda and Taxi, the Alice assistant, Kinopoisk, Yandex Music, and services of CIAN, Apteka.ru, Vkusno — i tochka, Dodo Pizza and Pulkovo airport.
- On October 12, Yandex acknowledged a systemic loss of stability of Yandex Cloud; MKPAO Yandex shares fell sharply on the Moscow Exchange and analysts estimated damages in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
- According to Cloudflare Radar, automated bot traffic from the Yandex network dropped from roughly 80–88% of its two-week maximum before the strikes to a low of 0.3–0.4% after them, with a gradual recovery to around 17% as of writing.
- Ukrainian sources said the strikes affected the operation of Russian bot networks and propaganda clusters, with temporary disruptions reported in the Pravda, InfoDefense and Nod of Time networks and a drop in online support for Germany's AfD and the US MAGA movement.
- Yandex's attempt to redistribute load to VK Cloud, Selectel and K2Cloud reportedly failed due to a lack of free server racks in Russia, and Yandex said it could not confirm the safety of equipment at the Sasovo site.
Why it matters
The strikes hit infrastructure tied to one of Russia's largest technology companies, with cascading effects across Yandex's cloud platform and consumer-facing services. Disruptions extended beyond Yandex itself to logistics, retail cash systems, an airport and a range of other Russian online services. Monitoring data shows a dramatic drop in automated bot traffic from the Yandex network, and commentators linked the strikes to a visible decline in online support for several political movements abroad. Analysts estimated damages in the hundreds of millions of dollars and Yandex shares fell sharply on the Moscow Exchange.
What happened
Between October 8 and 11, 2026, Ukraine carried out a sequence of strikes against three large Yandex data centers inside Russia. On the night of October 8, a center at Sasovo in Ryazan Oblast — on the territory of the Sasta plant, which housed the Chervonenkis and Lyapunov supercomputers — was disabled. The strike caused disruptions to Yandex Cloud, Yandex Mail, Yandex Disk, Yandex Documents and T-Bank apps. On the morning of October 9, the most powerful of the three, the Grabtsevo center near Kaluga (63 MW, about 3,800 racks), was struck, forcing Yandex Cloud into emergency mode and disrupting the logistics and cash systems of the Magnit and Fix Price retail chains as well as Yandex Eda and Yandex Taxi. On the night of October 11, the Vladimir center (50 MW, 2,880 racks) was hit, and a fire destroyed the Galushkin supercomputer, fully halting the site and stopping the Alice assistant, Kinopoisk, Yandex Music, the Telemost system and Yandex's Smart Home services. The combined disabling of the three centers produced cascading effects across CIAN, Apteka.ru, the Vkusno — i tochka and Dodo Pizza chains, and Pulkovo airport. On October 12, Yandex acknowledged a systemic loss of stability of its cloud platform. Monitoring from Cloudflare and NetBlocks is cited as independent confirmation of the disruption, and analysts put the damage in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Yandex's shares on the Moscow Exchange fell sharply, and its attempt to shift load to VK Cloud, Selectel and K2Cloud reportedly failed because there were no free server racks available in Russia. According to Cloudflare Radar, automated bot traffic originating from the Yandex network fell from roughly 80–88% of its two-week maximum before the strikes to a low of 0.3–0.4% after them, with a gradual recovery to around 17% as of writing.
How Ukrainian sources describe it
The Ukrainian sources that reported on the strikes framed them explicitly in strategic and information-warfare terms. They emphasized that Yandex's data centers underpin Russian propaganda operations directed at centrist political forces in Europe and the United States, and that disabling them degraded the infrastructure behind automated dissemination of destructive content. They also pointed to political aftershocks: temporary disruptions in the Kremlin-linked Pravda, InfoDefense and Nod of Time networks, a decline in online support for Germany's AfD and the US MAGA movement, and a reported easing of anti-Ukrainian sentiment among Polish internet users and of anti-Polish sentiment among Ukrainian internet users in the wake of the strikes.
Where reporting differs
Yandex management said it could not confirm the safety of equipment at the Sasovo data center after the October 8 strike, while reporting by NV describes specific supercomputers at the site as destroyed or disabled and a fire at the Vladimir site, leaving the precise extent and nature of the damage at each facility uncertain.
Background
Yandex data centers are reported to host the supercomputers Chervonenkis, Lyapunov and Galushkin, which support the company's cloud and consumer services. According to the available reporting, Yandex's attempt to redistribute its load to other Russian cloud providers failed because of a lack of free server racks in Russia. Monitoring data from Cloudflare and NetBlocks is cited as independent confirmation of the disruption to Yandex Cloud.