Russia's TASS news agency is reporting that Russia's defence and digital development ministries are in talks about how to protect data centres, after several Yandex centres were targeted in Ukrainian drone attacks.
Users in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have reported disruptions to Yandex Go, with some users unable to book taxis or order food. It follows reports of damage to and shutdowns of Yandex data centres in Russia, raising questions about the region’s reliance on foreign digital infrastructure.
The disruption affected services differently across the three countries.
In Kazakhstan, users reported problems with Yandex Go and other services operated by the company. Yandex acknowledged that some functions were temporarily unavailable or unstable.
In Kyrgyzstan, passengers struggled to book taxis and customers encountered errors when ordering food, prompting an apology from Yandex to passengers, drivers, couriers and business partners.
In Uzbekistan, the problems extended to fare estimates and public transport tracking, although local media reported that Yandex Maps and Yandex Navigator continued to function.
The outages followed reports of a drone attack on a major Yandex data centre in Russia's Vladimir region on 11 October. According to these reports, the facility was forced to shut down completely, with the incident affecting more than 80 cloud components and dozens of digital services in Russia and beyond.
However, the extent to which the reported attack contributed to the disruptions across Central Asia has not been independently established.
The disruption is particularly significant given the role Yandex plays in the region’s digital economy. Often compared with Google, the Russian technology company has built a business extending well beyond internet search.
Its services include ride-hailing, food delivery, navigation, online shopping, entertainment, cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Its operations span areas served internationally by companies such as Google, China’s Baidu, Uber and Amazon, although their business models differ.
For users across Central Asia, Yandex is therefore more than a search engine. Its platforms have become part of everyday life, connecting passengers with drivers, customers with restaurants and businesses with digital services.
The scale of that presence is particularly evident in Kazakhstan, where Yandex says it operates more than 15 services. According to company figures, Yandex Maps has over three million monthly users in the country, while its search engine handles up to nine million queries a day.
In July 2025, Yandex Search accounted for more than 24 per cent of Kazakhstan’s search market. Across all markets served by the group, the monthly audience for its urban services reached 62.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2025. The company does not provide separate figures for Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan within that total, however, making it difficult to establish how many people were affected by the October disruption.
The figures help explain why even a temporary technical failure can have consequences beyond the application itself. Problems with ride-hailing or delivery platforms can affect not only customers but also drivers, couriers, restaurants and other businesses that depend on them.
The disruption across three countries also highlights a broader challenge for Central Asia: digital services operating in domestic markets may rely on technological infrastructure managed abroad.
As online platforms become more deeply integrated into national economies, their reliability increasingly depends on systems operating beyond national borders.
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