Services from the Russian company Yandex have experienced disruptions across both the North and South Caucasus, following a Ukrainian strike on a key data centre.
Yandex said it had ‘completely suspended’ operations at a data centre in Vladimir, Russia on Sunday after a Ukrainian drone hit the site. The company which operates popular taxi, map, payment, and food delivery services across Russia and the wider region said that no-one was injured in the latest strike but their systems were ‘unstable’ and, in some cases, unavailable in a service alert on Telegram.
It was Ukraine’s third successful attack on the company’s data centres in the past week.On Friday, Yandex stated that their Kaluga data centre was partially out of action following a strike and on Thursday an attack shut down the company’s Sasovo data hub. The latter houses two out of the three supercomputers that the Russian company has been using to develop their AI model.
Following the Sasovo strike on Thursday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, ‘We always respond in mirror-like fashion’.
‘You all know, they have been hitting and continue to hit our data centres. We are responding. I can’t share all the details’.
Yandex appears to have added a new clause to its user agreement in the wake of multiple attacks. As of 10 October, Yandex has no liability for failure to fulfill obligations ‘in the event of force majeure’ — which as of 10 October is now specified to include drone attacks.
In a Sunday statement on X, the head of Yandex’s FinTech division Dima Prigorev said they couldn’t give a timeline for when the company’s payment services would be back online. On Monday evening, internet monitoring group NetBlocks reported that Yandex was showing ‘no signs of recovery’.
The Russian company’s services are widely used in the North and South Caucasus.
No public transport timetables in Armenia
The shutdown has been heavily disruptive in Armenia, where Yandex dominates the market for ride-hailing apps and food delivery. In a statement published on Sunday afternoon, Yandex Armenia admitted that some services were ‘temporarily unavailable or working intermittently’.
‘Our teams are doing everything possible to restore services as quickly as possible. If your business is urgent, please use another service for now’.
Yerevan’s public transport system relies on Yandex to run and the drone attack has disabled some functions. OC Media journalists in Yerevan found that the navigation function of Yandex Maps was still working on Monday morning, but they could not see public transport timetables.
Users also had problems ordering taxis which was evident in a spike in demand for local taxi service GG — which raised their starting tariffs in response on Sunday. In a statement on Facebook, founder Grigorian Kachatur cited ‘disproportionately high demand and significantly lower supply’ for the price increase on Sunday and admitted that there had been technical issues.
‘gg servers are overloaded. The overall system is under heavy load. Our entire team is working to resolve the issue. The price increase is due to disproportionately high demand and significantly lower supply’.
On Monday, Kachatur released an update saying that the app was ‘working smoothly’, that ‘pricing issues have been resolved’, and that orders were ‘non-stop’.
Yandex payment services disrupted in the North Caucasus
While many Yandex services have become ubiquitous to modern life in Russia, the North Caucasus is also a region where locals may be accustomed to technical disruption — owing to constant mobile internet blackouts, ostensibly imposed by Moscow to prevent Ukrainian drone attacks. Yandex is one of the few sites on the government’s ‘white list’, which are still accessible during blackouts.
Yandex’s flagship Pay, Go, and Food services have all been heavily disrupted.
For example, to take Vladikavkaz as an example, users reported on social media that they are unable to pay for taxis using Yandex Go. Retailers are also experiencing issues. On Sunday, a branch of homeware store Lemana PRO closed after a server outage left the store unable to conduct sales. On 11 October, the city's pickup points for popular clothes brand Lamoda were also temporarily not fulfilling orders, with customers being advised to return tomorrow.
Yandex is also intentionally limiting some services to allow their flagship products to work better; Russians are complaining online about not being able to open photos or videos stored on Yandex Disk, the company’s cloud server, with some expressing concern that their data is gone forever.
Slower, but still functioning taxis in Georgia
In Georgia, services have slowed, but do not seem to have been completely shut down.
For example, users are receiving a warning on opening the Yandex Go app that it ‘may not work as expected’ but OC Media found that they could still book and pay for a taxi in Tbilisi.
Yandex has competitors like Bolt as a taxi service, so the disruption has not been as intensively felt as in other places in the Caucasus.
Minimal damages in Azerbaijan
The effect of the disruption seems to have been relatively minimal in Azerbaijan, but owing to the social media blackout implemented this morning, it is harder to assess the scale of the issue.
OC MediaRafig Shahbazov
While Yandex operates in Azerbaijan, like in Georgia, it has competitors and it does not do so as dominantly as in Armenia and the North Caucasus.
For example, when it comes to ride-hailing services, Yandex Go is used, but Yango — which started as a subsidiary of Yandex but now operates independently out of Dubai — is more popular. Uber and Bolt are also widely used in the country.