From accessing their money to ordering a taxi or takeout — millions of Russians were feeling the impact of Ukrainian strikes on the data centers of the country’s internet giant Yandex in their daily life. Well, I had the money, but it was inaccessible,” said Irina, a blogger from St. Petersburg, who had not been able to access her money for four days when she spoke with NBC News last week.
Irina, who like several other interviewees did not want her last name shared while speaking with a foreign news organization on a sensitive matter, said her rent was due the day the first outages happened, when she hoped “that it would be fixed in a few hours.” Days later, she still had no access to money to pay for utilities or even food for her small child. The strikes that took place over several days earlier this month were the first publicized attacks on Russian data centers as Ukraine seeks to bring the war home for Russians. The disruption hit a myriad of services provided by Yandex, a tech giant akin to Google whose services are deeply integrated into daily life in Russia, and whose digital infrastructure is relied on by other third-party platforms.
Many people took to social media to complain about not being able to order a taxi or food delivery. Others reported not being able to access their files on the company’s storage service, while some even struggled to get into their homes after their digital keys went offline. While most Yandex services have been coming back online, three people told NBC News they had been left locked out of their disposable cash and savings for days after disruptions to Yandex Pay, a digital payment service that many Russians use.
Irina, 21, said that in the future she will diversify her deposits across different banks and have a “substantial cash reserve” just in case. Yandex said Oct. 9 that no employees were hurt and that the company is working to restore service. We did not quite appreciate it before,” she added.
Mityaeva, who regained access to her money after several days, also had issues calling a taxi on the first day of the outages, and encountered problems with the system to enter her apartment building. Her Yandex home voice assistant, equivalent to an Amazon Echo, stopped responding to requests to play music and turn off the lights. She did not blame the company, saying Yandex was a “hostage of the situation,” adding: “I understand that this was not up to them, this came from the outside.” Others were more critical of the company.
Viktoria, a 30-year-old barista from Moscow, said she plans to stop using Yandex completely after being unable to access her money during the outages, describing it as the last straw after other recent issues. She said Saturday that she once again had access to her money through Yandex Pay, but said the service was displaying the wrong balance on her account. Three taxi drivers in Moscow, who use Yandex’s taxi application to take orders and get paid, all told NBC News they couldn’t see how much money they were making and could not withdraw their earnings during the outage.
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