Ukrainian drone strikes have plunged Russia’s internet into crisis. Meduza explains why the damage has been so extensive, and why a full recovery will likely take months.
Ukrainian drones struck a Yandex data center in Russia's Vladimir region overnight on October 11, the third consecutive hit on the tech giant's infrastructure after attacks on facilities in Sasovo and Kaluga earlier in the week. The strikes knocked out Yandex Go, Yandex Eats, Yandex Pay, and a wide swath of banks, retailers, and news sites that rented space on Yandex's servers.
Yandex quietly updated its user agreement to classify drone and missile strikes as force majeure, disclaiming liability for the fallout. The company's own emergency drills assumed losing one of six data centers at a time; Ukraine has now hit three, and two have been shut down entirely.
An analyst told Fontanka that Yandex Cloud has run out of spare capacity after just three strikes, calling it a very bad sign. Russian law requires most user data to stay inside the country, so companies scrambling for backup capacity are largely stuck choosing among domestic competitors rather than fleeing abroad.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.