Yandex Strikes Reveal Central Asia's Russian Tech Reliance — SkimNews
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- Yandex facilities were struck by Ukrainian drones three times over one weekend, with the third hit on October 11 targeting a data center east of Moscow in Vladimir.
- Central Asian users of Yandex Go — the ride-sharing and food delivery superapp that dominates after Uber ceded the region in 2017 — reported outages booking rides, ordering food and accessing accounts in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
- inDrive, an alternative ride-sharing app operating in Kazakhstan, saw some ride prices triple as users shifted off the inoperable Yandex Go app, prompting Kazakhstan's Agency for the Protection and Development of Competition to issue a warning.
- inDrive founder Arsen Tomsky attributed the price surge to a sharp demand spike and shortage of available vehicles, according to RFE/RL's Kazakh Service.
- Kazakhstan's Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development stated that Kazakh users' personal data is stored on servers inside Kazakhstan, but acknowledged the broader digital architecture connecting users to drivers remains dependent on Russian infrastructure.
- Ukraine framed the attacks as a response to Russian strikes on Ukrainian data centers and claimed the targets generated revenue for Moscow; President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 'everyone noticed' a drop in Russian social media bot activity afterward, a claim the article notes is 'far more complicated' than asserted.
- Russian media reported that fully restoring operations at the affected data centers could take months, and that further strikes could not be ruled out.
Why it matters: Central Asian Yandex Go users lost access to rides and food delivery despite their personal data being stored locally — because the connecting architecture sits in Russia. When demand pivoted to inDrive, Kazakh authorities intervened as prices tripled, showing that a single drone strike on a Vladimir data center triggers regulatory and consumer consequences thousands of kilometers away in Almaty and Bishkek.
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