Yandex is waiving cloud-service charges for existing customers in Russia from October 8 through October 31 as it works to recover from drone strikes on three data centers. Some users have regained access to payments and transfers, but both its cloud platform and payment service remain impaired.
The cloud business announced the waiver in an October 13 service update, saying the platform continued to operate at limited capacity. The concession covers every Russian availability zone. October invoices will include only resource use through October 7, and charges already appearing for later dates will be adjusted automatically.
Yandex has reported damage at sites in Sasovo, Kaluga and Vladimir. The Sasovo center was severely damaged during the night of October 7–8 and stopped operating completely. An attack on Kaluga on October 9 put part of that site’s infrastructure out of service. Operations at Vladimir were halted after an attack during the night of October 11.
The company said no employees were injured at the three sites. Emergency services and Yandex specialists were working at the affected facilities, and the company said it was difficult to estimate when equipment could return to service.
The strikes also reached infrastructure used for AI development. The Sasovo site houses two of Yandex’s three supercomputers used to develop its AI model, Reuters reported. That account did not establish how much of the computing hardware was damaged.
Yandex Pay’s recovery is proceeding in stages. Dmitry Pirogov, head of Yandex’s fintech business, said in an October 13 update that access to transfers and payments had returned for some customers. Payments using plastic cards and payment stickers were fully operational, he said, while transfers involving savings accounts, Russia’s fast-payment system and bank details were gradually returning.
Pirogov warned that some functions remained unavailable and individual transactions could still encounter errors. Access was being restored in phases to manage the load on the service.
He said transaction data had been designed to replicate simultaneously across several data centers. Following the attacks, engineers had to rebuild the infrastructure to maintain that arrangement while restoring service. He attributed the prolonged payment disruption to that work.
Customers whose Super Split installment or loan payments fell due while the service was unavailable will not be treated as overdue or have their repayment terms changed, Pirogov said. They can pay when access returns, and any penalties charged will be reimbursed through support.
The cloud team has also advised customers to use alternative platforms for hosting and backup resources. Its October 13 status update kept the incident open while engineers continued recovery work.
Sources: Yandex Cloud, Yandex Pay, Reuters
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By the Control Plane Editorial Team