Drone Attack on Yandex Data Center in Vladimir Region Leaves Kazakhstan Without Taxi and Delivery Services

A drone attack on a Yandex data center in Russia's Vladimir region on October 11 triggered a major outage of the company's services in Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Armenia, cutting off millions of users from taxi and delivery orders.

Passengers in Almaty and Astana — Kazakhstan's largest cities — were forced to urgently seek alternative transport. The ride-hailing service inDrive recorded a sharp spike in demand, which led to a noticeable imbalance between the number of passengers and available drivers on the platform.

The incident starkly illustrated how deeply digital platforms have become embedded in the everyday urban mobility of Kazakhstanis: familiar routes became inaccessible within minutes of the outage beginning.

Beyond transport services, users reported disruptions to Yandex Music, Yandex Pay, and Yandex Cloud. The attack forced the data center in the Vladimir region to suspend operations.

Yandex services in Kazakhstan subsequently resumed operations. The company's technical teams continue working to stabilize and restore normal functioning of all affected products.