Yandex data centre in Vladimir shuts down after third Ukrainian drone strike in four days

A Ukrainian drone attack has knocked out a Yandex data centre in the city of Vladimir, east of Moscow, forcing the Russian technology giant to halt operations at the site. It is the third time in four days that Kyiv has struck one of the company's major server hubs.

Yandex confirmed the shutdown on its cloud division's Telegram channel on Sunday, stating that the facility's infrastructure was damaged in the strike. The company said there were no casualties, but that work at the site had been completely suspended while engineers attempt to restore connectivity.

The attack is part of an intensifying Ukrainian campaign aimed directly at Russia's domestic digital infrastructure. Two other Yandex hubs were hit earlier in the week: one in Sasovo, in the Ryazan region, on Thursday, and another in the Kaluga region, south-west of Moscow, on Friday.

Outages hit taxis, apps, and artificial intelligence

Yandex functions as Russia's dominant internet platform, running the country's primary search engine, large-scale artificial intelligence models, cloud hosting, and everyday consumer services including food delivery and ride-hailing.

The three strikes have caused widespread technical fallout. Disruptions rippled through Yandex's smart home systems and AI chatbot, while independent Russian outlet Astra reported that customers in dozens of Russian cities, as well as in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Armenia, were unable to hail taxis or access online banking. Yandex acknowledged that its data centres are vital to daily operations, warning users that it remains very difficult to predict when normal service will return.

Ukraine has not formally claimed responsibility for each individual hit, but the timing aligns with a deliberate shift by Kyiv to target industrial and logistical nodes deep inside Russian territory, mirroring Russian missile attacks that have previously damaged Ukrainian data centres.

Deadly air raids in Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk

The drone strikes inside Russia came against the backdrop of heavy Russian bombardments across Ukraine over the weekend.

In the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian emergency services finished searching the rubble on Sunday following a Russian bombing the day before. The death toll rose to 23, including four children, while more than 30 people were wounded, according to Ivan Fedorov, co-chair of the regional defence council. In the south-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, the State Emergency Service said overnight Russian attacks across four districts injured six people.

Inside Russia's border territory, regional officials in Bryansk said a separate Ukrainian drone strike killed one man and wounded two women.

Diplomatic friction with Washington

The escalation unfolds as political pressure mounts from Washington. US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that Ukraine should replace President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accusing him of failing to negotiate an end to the war and blaming him for high domestic diesel prices in the United States.

Zelenskyy rejected the criticism on Sunday, writing on X that Moscow alone bears responsibility for the conflict. He offered to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries immediately if the Kremlin stops bombarding Ukraine's power grid, but said any truce must be mutual and guaranteed.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha also pushed back, arguing that Zelenskyy retains the mandate of the Ukrainian public during a war for national independence, and that foreign suggestions to remove him only show he is defending the country effectively.