Ukrainian drones hit Russian data centers, disrupting Russian apps and services

Over the past week, Ukraine attacked some of Yandex's biggest data centers, disrupting the operations of various Russian national applications and metropolitan digital services. Russia, which has itself targeted Ukrainian data centers in recent weeks.

Worse yet for Russia, its online disinformation activities appear disrupted by these attacks. Although not as catastrophic as some initial reports claimed, a new report from Cloudflare claims that the bot traffic merely migrated to other hosts.

A new target

Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the war has moved through several phases. From the pushback of Russian forces in 2022, to the rapid deployment of FPV drones in 2023, to the mid-range drone strike campaigns both sides have focused on since 2025. Over that time, the targets have changed. Ukrainian supporters published "bingo cards," with various refineries and warehouses listed, often superimposing fire graphics to showcase when they'd been damaged or destroyed.

There are tens of major targets across different industries and networks; there are only a handful of Yandex data centers. Although there is a more expansive list of data centers from other providers that support the Yandex cloud network, most are small, only offering a few megawatts of compute capacity.

Considering that targeting just three of Yandex's facilities brought several key digital services such as shopping and taxi apps to their knees in major Russian cities, it may not take much for Ukraine to severely hamper the modern digital elements of Russia's economy and society at large.

While Ukraine isn't immune to similar attempts at disruption, its already-hardened networks and expansive list of allies make it far more resilient.

Friends in the right places

While overreliance on digital services from American companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon has its own drawbacks, in Ukraine's case, it's been a far more resilient strategy than Russia's. Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centers have caused some disruption, but much of Ukraine's digital infrastructure runs on Amazon's AWS cloud platform. That includes distributed hosting, resilient service structure, and AI integration.

That means that when Russia hits Ukrainian data centers, the services can be quickly migrated to another data center, perhaps located in another country entirely. Amazon has the world to fall back on if necessary. Ukraine also has allies in many other technologically advanced nations that can provide digital infrastructure and expertise, including access to the latest AI cybersecurity models.

In contrast, Russian internet and services are far more inward-facing. It has attempted to cut its population off from the outside world by banning Western services like WhatsApp and Telegram, pushing its citizens towards government-run applications like Max.

As the Russian-version of Google, too, Yandex has its fingers in a similar number of digital pies. It runs online search, mapping, online shopping, cloud storage, ridesharing, food ordering, and more. When its systems are disrupted, services that people have come to rely on in a modern digital economy break down, and there are far fewer alternative options.

Russian allies like North Korea, Belarus, and Iran can't offer much in the way of digital infrastructure support. Even China, which has been aiding Russia throughout the conflict, can't help much here. While it is making strides in building out its compute network for AI infrastructure, it runs a relatively walled-garden form of the internet. Integrating Russian applications with that would be complex and time-consuming.

All of this suggests that if Ukraine continues to hit Russian data centers, there's a real potential that Russian citizens and its military could lose access to digital services that have become ubiquitous in 21st-century life.

The effect that would have on Russian society and its war-fighting goals remains unclear, but it would have an impact.

Russia's AI capacity

Losing its most capable data centers alongside sanctions that prevent it from taking advantage of the AI boom that's buoying many other global economies could severely hamper Russian efforts to modernize its economy.

While the U.S., EU, and China are building out hundreds of billions of dollars worth of data centers to power the next generation of artificial intelligence models, Russia is struggling to hold on to what it's got. With major data centers now in Ukraine's sights, including those scheduled for expansion, Russia could see its digital future wiped away in a matter of months.

With even medium-tier data centers often taking years to build, even with ready access to the hardware to power them, Russia could be on the cusp of falling decades behind its contemporaries.

Bots are Down, But Not That Much

One highly publicized impact of these strikes on Yandex data centers has been a reduction in automated online activity from Russia. While that does appear to have reduced bot traffic slightly, particularly around support for far-right parties, it may not be as impactful as some initial reports claim, as Cloudflare has published a report stating that many of the bots have merely migrated to other hosts, reducing, but not eliminating, the bots themselves.

Journalist Ilya Lozovsky posted a lengthy explanation on Twitter/X about why Russian bots haven't been as disrupted as some have claimed, highlighting that bot activity hasn't fallen off as much as legitimate web crawlers and search functions at Yandex.

But while Russian bots haven't gone dark, there are several reports of reduced online activity among far-right groups, particularly those supporting prominent far-right politicians.

Posts supporting the AFD in Germany don't appear as impacted as initial claims suggested — the chart doing the rounds has clear errors in it, and German tech outlet Rohtext claims online discourse in general went down, rather than specific parties being impacted.

What these strikes have done, though, is highlight a clear and present weakness in Russia's modern society, military, and economy. If Ukraine can continue its strikes against Russian data centers, it may well bring key public services to their knees, as well as cripple Russia's ability to compete in modern digital services beyond the end of this war, further inhibiting the Russian economy in the future.