Sawt Falasteen - Russian Yandex data centre operations disrupted after drone strike

Yandex, often dubbed "Russia's Google", runs the country's most popular search engine, as well as a food-ordering and taxi app used by tens of millions.

The attack, the third reported attack within a week, could signal the start of a new retaliatory campaign from Kyiv targeting Russia's internet infrastructure -- weeks after Moscow started hitting data centres in Ukraine.

"As a result of a UAV attack, infrastructure at the Yandex data centre in Vladimir was damaged," the company said in a service alert on Telegram.

No one was injured in the attack, Yandex said, adding that emergency services were at the site and the company was evaluating ways to restore operations.

"Operations at the data centre have been completely suspended," it added, advising users to activate disaster-recovery plans as the platform operated in emergency mode.

"The remaining resource configuration is considered unstable," the company said, warning that technical support communications could also be disrupted as teams assessed the damage.

On Friday, Yandex said a drone attack had damaged a data centre in the Kaluga region, putting several modules out of service and causing disruptions to some services.

A night before, an attack sparked a fire at a Yandex facility in the Ryazan region, causing major outages that affected transport and e-commerce platforms.

Y.AlMasri--SF-PST