Yandex Cloud Outage Traced to Drone Strikes on Data Centers

Yandex, Russia's leading cloud services provider, confirmed a widespread outage after drone attacks damaged three of its data centers, prompting the shutdown of two facilities and a partial interruption at a third.

The company disclosed that the strikes caused structural damage to critical infrastructure, forcing engineers to halt operations at the affected sites to protect data integrity and prevent further loss. As a result, users of Yandex Cloud lost access to stored files, virtual machines, and related services across multiple regions.

Yandex said the affected centers are located in the western part of the country, a region that has seen a rise in unmanned aerial system activity over the past year. While the exact motive behind the attacks remains unclear, the company emphasized that the incidents appear to be isolated events rather than part of a broader coordinated cyber campaign.

Customers reported an inability to retrieve documents, run workloads, or synchronize data with Yandex's suite of productivity tools. The outage, which began late Thursday evening, persisted into Friday morning, prompting the firm to issue a public statement outlining its recovery plan and urging users to monitor official channels for updates.

Industry analysts note that the disruption underscores the growing physical security challenges faced by cloud providers, especially those operating large-scale data centers in regions with heightened geopolitical tension. The reliance on physical infrastructure means that attacks on hardware can have immediate, visible effects on digital services, a risk that many operators are now forced to reassess.

Yandex has pledged to restore full functionality as quickly as possible, citing redundant systems and backup sites that will be brought online once safety inspections are completed. The company also indicated that it is reviewing its security protocols, including enhanced perimeter monitoring and coordination with local authorities to deter future incidents. Users are advised to maintain local backups of critical data and to stay informed through Yandex's status page for further developments.