Russia's Yandex bot traffic nearly eliminated overnight after Ukraine drone strikes cripple multiple of 'Russia's Google' data centers — Ukraine intensifies bombing of Yandex data centers in response to Moscow’s strikes on Kyiv data centers

Russian bot traffic has dropped dramatically in the past few days after Ukraine knocked out Yandex’s biggest data centers, with a third attack happening last night. Cloudflare reports that bot traffic from the Yandex network has dropped to just 0.4% of the maximum number of HTTP requests recorded in the past two weeks. It initially dropped to around 57% on Oct. 8, which happened when Ukraine hit a Yandex data center housing two supercomputers in Sasovo, Russia, located around 195 miles to the southeast of the Kremlin. A second, bigger Yandex campus in Kaluga, about 220 miles to the west of Sasovo, was knocked offline yesterday.

These attacks are apparently Ukraine’s response to Moscow’s strikes on its own data centers, some of which resulted in the outage of some of the most popular piracy websites.

Yandex is Russia’s equivalent to Google, and its Yandex Cloud service status reports that at least 84 services are currently offline. Global internet monitoring firm NetBlocks said that Yandex’s network traffic has dropped to just 30% for Yandex Cloud and 63% for Yandex LLC, most likely resulting in slower internet services or complete disruption for the average Russian. Unfortunately, the ordinary Russian wouldn’t be able to use high-speed satellite internet as a backup, as Starlink does not work in Russia, while the competing Rassvet constellation has had a good number of its existing satellites fall back to the surface after launch.

These incidents are a result of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which escalated dramatically in 2022 after Russia’s failed attempt to capture Kyiv. However, many observers say that the war actually started in 2014 when Russian forces seized Crimea and occupied parts of eastern Ukraine after the fall of the pro-Russian government that year.

The hostilities, which have dragged on for years, saw the introduction of new technologies and strategies, specifically in drone warfare. It began with the wide deployment of commercially available drones on the front lines, typically for reconnaissance, dropping explosives, and kamikaze-style attacks. However, it has since evolved into long-range warfare, with specially built drones able to reach distances of over 1,500 miles and destroy Tu-95 strategic bombers situated well behind the front lines.

The drone strikes on data centers are relatively new developments. While data centers on bases are often considered valid targets, Russia’s justification for the attacks on civilian data centers was that Ukrainian military intelligence used them. This isn’t the first time that civilian data centers have also been hit by drones and missiles. AWS sites in Bahrain and the UAE have been hit multiple times since Washington started its bombing campaign against Iran, with the company telling its clients to move their data to sites outside the region, as it doesn’t have a recovery timeline.

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