Russia's AI, Cloud Services, Apps and Bot Attacks Shut Down By Ukraine Strikes

Russia's Yandex is the equivalent of Google, Amazon and Uber. It is that country's largest provider of tech services: internet, cloud, AI development, etc. Ukrainian drone and missile strikcs have now badly damaged or destroyed its primary data centers and AI training facilities. 

The result is not just that Russian consumers are frustrated by the disruption - but so is the Russian military, which also depends on them. And, in a particularly helpful side effect for western democracy, Russian bot traffic aimed at the US midterm elections, European concerns about Russian threats (and ancillary interference like inflaming passions in northern Ireland over attempts to revive Orange Order parades) as well as spewing hate and division across the civilized world, has virtually disappeared. JL

Mike Pearl reports in Gizmodo and Jowi Morales reports in Tom's Hardware:

A big chunk of Russia’s cloud and AI infrastructure has been blown up. Services are disrupted, or completely shut down as one of the focal points for Ukraine’s strikes has been Yandex, “a (Russian) version of Google, Amazon and Uber in one.” The third attack, Sunday morning, was devastating, “resulting in the complete shutdown of its data centre." Russian bot traffic has dropped to 0.4% of the maximum number of HTTP requests recorded in the past two weeks. It initially dropped to  57% on Oct. 8, when Ukraine hit a Yandex data center. A second, bigger Yandex campus was then  knocked offline. Yandex’s network traffic has dropped to 30% for Yandex Cloud and 63% for Yandex LLC, resulting in slower services or complete disruption for Russians, who cant use high-speed satellite internet, as Starlink does not work in Russia, while the new Rassvet system had a good number of its satellites fall back to earth after launch. 

The big story out of the Ukraine War for 2026 has been Ukraine’s ability to strike oil infrastructure deep inside Russia. These are new capabilities that stem from the maturing of specialist divisions in the Ukrainian military like its 1st Separate Center of Unmanned Systems. With purpose-built fixed-wing drones like the AN-196 RS and FP-6—basically just exploding airplanes—Ukraine has spent this year turning up the volume on this war for Russia and the wider world through the power of blowing important things up. 

But it’s not just oil. Today, a big chunk of Russia’s cloud and AI infrastructure has been blown up. Services are disrupted, or completely shut down.

Over the past few days, one of the focal points for Ukraine’s onslaught has been Yandex, a company the New York Times once called, “a version of Google, Amazon and Uber rolled into one.” As explained by Reuters, the third attack on Yandex, which occurred Sunday morning, was pretty devastating, “resulting in the complete shutdown of its data centre in the Vladimir region.” 

Per Reuters, this comes within days of attacks on another data center facility in Kalugg, and one in Sasovo near Moscow, where it sounds like Yandex performs most of its training runs. (Reuters describes it as “where two ⁠of the three supercomputers used to develop the company’s AI model are housed.”) 

If you take the Kyiv Post at its word, it sounds almost like a switch has been flipped, and a ton of important services are just off in much of Russia, along with Russian services across the wider world. Perhaps most notably, the Alice voice assistant—Yandex’s answer to Siri or Alexa—is reportedly down. That would mean users with Yandex’s Station line of smart speaker devices can’t interact with them properly. 

The Kyiv Post says Yandex Music, and Telemost, its version of Google Meet, were also disabled at the time it was writing on Sunday. 

And since Yandex’s data centers are also critical cloud infrastructure for other services, the tendrils of the outage are widely dispersed—again, according to the Kyiv Post. Yandex Compute Cloud, a provider of virtual machines, is one of the services experiencing what the Kyiv Post calls “extensive outages.”

Things get a bit darker if you dig into just how important Yandex Cloud is across Russia. Yandex offers, for instance, specialized cloud solutions for healthcare. It also provides at least some of the cloud storage used, in theory, to safeguard Russian citizen’s private data for government use.

And, much like the attacks you may remember from earlier this year, in which it struck distribution centers belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s answer to Amazon, these attacks are creating chaos for consumers. The Kyiv Post writes that users have complained on Sunday about banking and rideshare app failures. Apps for major retail companies like the food sales colossus Magnit, and Fix Price, which is a little like Dollar General, are also apparently being interrupted.  

The world is getting a break from Russian bots thanks to Kyiv. 

Russian bot traffic has dropped dramatically in the past few days after Ukraine knocked out Yandex’s biggest data centers, with a third attack happening last night. Cloudflare reports that bot traffic from the Yandex network has dropped to just 0.4% of the maximum number of HTTP requests recorded in the past two weeks. It initially dropped to around 57% on Oct. 8, which happened when Ukraine hit a Yandex data center housing two supercomputers in Sasovo, Russia, located around 195 miles to the southeast of the Kremlin. A second, bigger Yandex campus in Kaluga, about 220 miles to the west of Sasovo, was knocked offline yesterday.

These attacks are apparently Ukraine’s response to Moscow’s strikes on its own data centers, some of which resulted in the outage of some of the most popular piracy websites.

(Image credit: CloudFlare)

Yandex is Russia’s equivalent to Google, and its Yandex Cloud service status reports that at least 84 services are currently offline. Global internet monitoring firm NetBlocks said that Yandex’s network traffic has dropped to just 30% for Yandex Cloud and 63% for Yandex LLC, most likely resulting in slower internet services or complete disruption for the average Russian. Unfortunately, the ordinary Russian wouldn’t be able to use high-speed satellite internet as a backup, as Starlink does not work in Russia, while the competing Rassvet constellation has had a good number of its existing satellites fall back to the surface after launch. 

These incidents are a result of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which escalated dramatically in 2022 after Russia’s failed attempt to capture Kyiv. However, many observers say that the war actually started in 2014 when Russian forces seized Crimea and occupied parts of eastern Ukraine after the fall of the pro-Russian government that year. 

The hostilities, which have dragged on for years, saw the introduction of new technologies and strategies, specifically in drone warfare. It began with the wide deployment of commercially available drones on the front lines, typically for reconnaissance, dropping explosives, and kamikaze-style attacks. However, it has since evolved into long-range warfare, with specially built drones able to reach distances of over 1,500 miles and destroy Tu-95 strategic bombers situated well behind the front lines.

The drone strikes on data centers are relatively new developments. While data centers on bases are often considered valid targets, Russia’s justification for the attacks on civilian data centers was that Ukrainian military intelligence used them. This isn’t the first time that civilian data centers have also been hit by drones and missiles. AWS sites in Bahrain and the UAE have been hit multiple times since Washington started its bombing campaign against Iran, with the company telling its clients to move their data to sites outside the region, as it doesn’t have a recovery timeline.