Ukraine targets ‘Russia’s Google’ as the internet becomes a new front line

By Zahra Ullah, Anna Chernova, CNN

Moscow (CNN) — “Something is constantly breaking, something is constantly not working,” 31-year-old Anton from St. Petersburg says. He came home one night to darkness. His smart bulbs were not turning on.

The bulbs are powered by Yandex, a Russian technology company that provides internet- related services and digital products including cloud, search, maps, AI, ride-hailing and food delivery – an ecosystem akin to Google, Uber and Amazon combined.

“It’s a strange feeling when you’re sitting in a dark room and don’t really have a way to turn the lights on. It felt like a power outage, just for a rather unusual reason,” he told CNN.

Since October 8, Ukrainian attacks have damaged three of the five major data centers powering Yandex’s operations, disrupting the daily lives of millions of users. Across Russia and neighboring countries such as Kazakhstan and Belarus, outages have affected services ranging from online payments and business operations to search, navigation, ride-hailing and food delivery.

The strikes expose the vulnerabilities of Russia’s domestic digital economy, which Moscow has encouraged to reduce reliance on Western technology amid biting sanctions and corporate withdrawals following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but in which data centers have emerged as an Achilles’ Heel.

Kyiv has framed the attacks as retaliation for Russian strikes on Ukrainian data centers in September – attacks the Russian Defense Ministry mockingly described as a “digital detox” – underscoring how critical digital infrastructure has become another front line in the war.

For Anton, a history teacher, who gave only his first name for privacy and safety reasons, this was yet another reason for his weariness of what the Kremlin calls its “special military operation” – now in its fifth year.

Over the last year, the Kremlin has also taken to introducing its own internet blackouts for “security” reasons, clamped down on VPNs and blocked popular messaging apps such as Telegram and WhatsApp.

“Every time you run into something like this, it’s incredibly irritating. In my case, every time I just think about how sick and tired I am of (President Vladimir) Putin,” Anton told CNN. He added that it seems to him that people around him don’t blame Ukraine when these attacks happen but rather think “when is all this finally going to end?”

“There’s this general fatigue. Just fatigue from the war in general. Every time it makes me think again: Damn, this is all so exhausting. It’s really stupid that we’re living under these conditions,” he said.

Russians are largely shielded from the deadly horrors of the front lines, but Ukraine has sought to shatter the illusion that the consequences of war are far removed through drone strikes deep inside its territory. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has described these strikes as “long-range sanctions” for the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine.

They have had an impact. Putin himself has acknowledged as much in public statements. Attacks on oil refineries have led to widespread fuel shortages, while strikes on warehouses operated by Russia’s largest online retailers, Wildberries and Ozon, have caused chaos for micro-entrepreneurs who rely on their networks.

Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, also reported an attack on its data center in Balakovo, Saratov Region on Wednesday. The Kremlin, meanwhile, has placed the onus on private businesses to protect their critical infrastructure from Ukrainian drone attacks.

A 33-year-old taxi driver in Moscow told CNN he and other drivers had encountered problems with the Yandex Pro app which they use to receive and manage rides, after the third attack on a Yandex data center on October 11 in the Vladimir region. The driver asked to remain anonymous out of concerns for his livelihood.

“At first, the app began malfunctioning: No orders would come through for hours, and when they did, they often contained errors. For example, Yandex could send four different cars and drivers to the same order. Even after arriving at the pickup point and calling the passenger, drivers would find out that the passenger had already left in another taxi,” he recalled.

He said the most serious issue was that drivers could not withdraw money they had earned, making it difficult for them to pay for car rentals and fuel. He ultimately had to return his rental car to the taxi fleet because he could not afford to keep driving and not earning, while still paying for the vehicle.

“For many drivers, this isn’t just a technical glitch - it’s a question of whether they can continue working and supporting themselves,” he told CNN.

Tatiana, a Moscow resident who asked CNN to use a pseudonym, said she woke up on Tuesday to discover savings of 1.5 million rubles (around 17,830 USD) were no longer visible on her Yandex Pay account – Russia’s equivalent to Apple Savings, which stopped working after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. She’d been saving for a car.

“The panic got the better of me, and I cried my eyes out. I was preparing myself for the thought that I might never see that money again.” Tatiana said she is hoping for the best.

Yandex said in a statement that customers’ money was safe, and it is working on restoring services to the app after the attacks on the three data centers.

Ukrainian defense company Fire Point trolled Yandex on X in response to a statement from the tech giant’s head of fintech division, Dima Pirogov.

“Dima, have you tried turning it off and on again,” Fire Point replied.

As Ukraine faces pressure from its key ally, the United States, to halt strikes on Russia’s energy infrastructure and keep Russian diesel flowing to global markets, the message from Kyiv is clear: It still has ways to make life uncomfortable for the Kremlin.

The-CNN-Wire
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