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.“I ended up in a situation where I had absolutely no money.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.Following the attacks, Yandex said its “data centers are the iron heart" of the tech giant.Sefa Karacan / Anadolu via GettyWhile 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 res...