Russia's Yandex bot traffic nearly eliminated overnight after Ukraine drone strikes cripple multiple of 'Russia's Google' data centers

Russian internet traffic has plummeted significantly after Ukrainian drone strikes crippled key data centers operated by Yandex, the country's version of Google. According to Cloudflare, bot traffic from Yandex's network has plummeted to just 0.4% of its peak levels over the past two weeks. The surge in drone attacks began on October 8 when Ukrainian forces targeted a Yandex data center in Sasovo, home to two supercomputers located about 195 miles southeast of Moscow.

Just a few days later, on October 10, a larger Yandex campus in Kaluga, situated around 220 miles west of Sasovo, was also knocked out of commission. According to Yandex's own status reports, a staggering 84 of its services are currently down. Global internet monitoring firm NetBlocks reports that Yandex's network traffic has dropped to as low as 30% for Yandex Cloud and 63% for Yandex LLC, likely resulting in slower internet speeds or complete service disruption for average Russians.

The situation has worsened this morning with a fresh Ukrainian drone attack on data centers in Vladimir, causing a second collapse in Yandex's networks. This series of events is part of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which intensified dramatically in 2022 following Russia's failed attempt to capture Kyiv. While the war's origins can be traced back to 2014, when Russian forces seized Crimea and occupied parts of eastern Ukraine, the introduction of advanced drone technology has transformed the nature of warfare, with drones now capable of reaching over 1,500 miles and targeting strategic bombers.

The strikes on civilian data centers were initially justified by Russia as a response to Ukrainian military intelligence using these facilities, but this is not the first time such attacks have occurred. Companies like AWS have had to move their data to locations outside the region due to the ongoing hostilities.