Ukraine's Strikes on Yandex Data Centers Cut Off Russian Cash, Keys

A St. Petersburg blogger named Irina spent four straight days unable to touch her own money after Ukrainian strikes knocked out data centers belonging to Yandex, the Russian tech company whose services run much of daily life in the country, according to NBC News. Her rent was due the day the outages began. She told NBC News she hoped it "would be fixed in a few hours." It was not.

What happened to Yandex's data centers?

Smoke was seen billowing from a Yandex data center in Sasovo, in Russia's western Ryazan Oblast, after a drone strike sparked a fire on Oct. 8, per an image obtained from social media video and cited by NBC News. The strikes unfolded over several days this month and were, per the outlet, the first publicized attacks on Russian data centers as Ukraine works to bring the war's effects into Russians' everyday lives.

Why were Russians locked out of money and homes?

Yandex functions in Russia the way Google does in much of the rest of the world, and its infrastructure underpins third-party platforms as well as its own apps. When the data centers went down, the disruption rippled outward: people could not order taxis or food delivery, could not reach files stored on the company's cloud service, and in some cases could not get into their own apartments because digital door keys tied to Yandex services went offline, NBC News reported.

The most acute pain point was Yandex Pay, a digital payment service widely used across Russia. Three people told NBC News they were locked out of disposable cash and savings for days after the service was disrupted, even as most other Yandex offerings gradually came back online.

How did Yandex respond?

Yandex said on Oct. 9 that no employees were hurt in the strikes and that the company was working to restore service, according to NBC News. The company separately said its "data centers are the iron heart" of the business — a description that underscores how central the infrastructure is to operations that go well beyond search or email.

What is Irina doing differently now?

Irina, 21, said the episode left her without money for utilities or food for her small child in the days after the strike. Going forward, she told NBC News, she plans to diversify her deposits across different banks and keep a "substantial cash reserve" in case of another outage. She and other sources NBC News spoke with declined to have their last names published, citing the sensitivity of discussing the war with a foreign outlet.

By the numbers

• 4 days: how long Irina said she went without access to her money after the first outage.
• Oct. 8–9: the strike hit a Yandex data center in Sasovo on Oct. 8; Yandex confirmed no injuries and said it was restoring service by Oct. 9.

What does this signal about the war's next phase?

The strikes mark a shift toward targeting the digital backbone that keeps routine commerce, transportation and even home access running, rather than only military or energy infrastructure. NBC News frames the attacks as part of a Ukrainian effort to make the war's costs tangible for ordinary Russians, not just its military and government.

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