Drone attack reported to shut down Yandex data centre in Vladimir region, Russia

What happened

Drones attacked a Yandex data centre in the Vladimir region of Russia on 11 October 2026, according to Yandex, which said its infrastructure was damaged and the data centre had been completely shut down. Yandex said no one was injured, but some of its services were unavailable, and power outages were reported in the Yandex Cloud service area. The regional governor said drones attacked infrastructure in the suburbs of Vladimir and that two substations supplying electricity to about 5,000 residents were taken offline.

The governor said people had been evacuated from buildings near the site. Eyewitness accounts of a strike on a residential area have not been independently confirmed. The reports do not describe the damaged equipment, the power chain or any fire in detail.

Contributing factors

Physical damage from a drone strike on the site and nearby infrastructure, as reported by Yandex and regional officials. The sources do not state the specific failure in the data centre's power chain or whether the substation outages affected the facility.

Lessons learned

1. Data centres and their power supply should be assessed for physical attack and drone threats, with hardened enclosures and protected switchgear where risk is high.
2. Operators should have diverse grid connections and onsite backup so that loss of one substation does not force a full shutdown.
3. Operators near populated areas should have evacuation and neighbour notification plans for strikes on their sites.

More lessons on electrical protection and isolation, emergency response and public communication, from every incident on the register.

Source

news.liga.net