MediumII Cyber Warfare & Critical Infrastructure20 October 2026, Tuesday
Ukrainian strikes on data centres disrupt Russian courts and payments
Between 8 and 18 October Ukraine hit 3 Yandex data centres, a Sberbank facility under construction and a VK data centre. NetBlocks said Yandex Cloud connectivity fell to about 30% of normal; on 20 October another data centre was destroyed in occupied Donetsk.
The Kyiv Independent, citing Verstka and The Moscow Times, reported that the chain began on 8 October with a strike on one of Yandex's largest data centres, at Sasovo in the Ryazan region. PravoTech, which runs Russia's electronic arbitration court system, reported a major outage at a Yandex Cloud data centre after the 8 October attack. Courts in 6 regions, Sverdlovsk, Smolensk, Tula, Kostroma, Ivanovo and Yaroslavl, were unable to hold online hearings. Verstka wrote on 16 October that dozens of hearings had been disrupted.
According to The Moscow Times on 19 October, Habr counted 84 cloud services affected. Yandex Pay was still only partly working on 19 October, and taxi, food delivery, maps and email services were also disrupted. Over the same period some government websites in the Kaluga region went down, and Yandex Go was temporarily unavailable even in Tbilisi until 19 October. T-Invariant said 3 Yandex supercomputers were also most likely badly damaged; the company has not disclosed the full damage or a repair timetable.
The constraint lies in concentration. Russia has more than 200 data centres, The Moscow Times says, but commercial capacity is clustered around Moscow and in 4 companies: Yandex, VK, Rostelecom and Sberbank. Because data localisation rules keep backups inside the country, an outage at a single facility can spread to 84 services. On the other side, the Parkovyi data centre in Kyiv moved client copies to backup sites in the EU after a Russian attack in early October. The Kyiv Independent says a Russian strike on 23 September hit a data centre in Kyiv and left about 100,000 households without internet.
Talay assessment
Bottom line
Ukraine is using kinetic strikes to produce cyber effects: 5 facilities knocked out 84 cloud services and the courts of 6 regions. Russian data infrastructure is concentrated in 4 companies and one geography, and localisation rules compound that into a single point of failure. Russia is likely to respond by stepping up attacks on Ukrainian data centres. The most likely path is a lasting expansion of the target set from energy terminals to data infrastructure.
Likely effects
- Russia's digital economyNegativeWeeks
Payments, transport and public services all rely on the same cloud provider, so a single strike halts several sectors at once.
- Cyber insurance and continuityUncertain1–6 months
With data centres now physical targets, geographic dispersion becomes mandatory in disaster recovery plans; the Kyiv operator has moved its backups to the EU.
- Regional servicesNegativeWeeks
Yandex Go's temporary outage in Tbilisi shows the disruption spreading to neighbouring markets that use Russian platforms.
Possibilities, ranked
- 1The target set widens55%
Ukraine keeps striking data centres, and Russia targets Ukraine's cloud and communications infrastructure more often.
Watch: A strike on another Rostelecom or Sberbank data centre and NetBlocks outage measurements
- 2Washington's pressure halts it30%
The US peace push and pressure over aid lead Kyiv to limit deep strikes, and attacks on data centres become rarer.
Watch: A fall in Ukraine's deep strikes after the Oslo and St Petersburg talks
- 3Russia disperses capacity15%
Moscow rapidly adds backup sites without loosening localisation rules, and the impact of outages diminishes.
Watch: Yandex announcing a repair timetable and new investment in backup sites
Probabilities are calibrated judgement based on the sources, not measurement, and are revised as new information arrives. Not investment advice.
Market reaction
Indicators affected
- Yandex Cloud connectivity▼ ≈30%
- Cloud services affected▼ 84
- Data facilities hit (8–18 Oct)▼ 5