Ukraine Strike On 'Russian Google' Leaves Millions With No Access To Money

"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 spoke to NBC News after four days without access to her money. 

The war has now reached Russians' bank apps, taxis and digital door keys. Ukrainian strikes on data centres belonging to the internet giant Yandex mark the start of a new retaliatory campaign aimed at Russia's internet infrastructure.

Irina told the US outlet that her rent was due on the day the first outages began. She hoped "that it would be fixed in a few hours." Days later, she still could not pay for utilities, or even buy food for her small child.

The strikes took place over several days earlier this month. They came weeks after Moscow began hitting data centres in Ukraine. Since October 8, Ukrainian attacks have damaged three of Yandex's five major data centres.

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A Tech Giant Woven Into Daily Life

Yandex is a tech company often compared to Google. Its services are deeply built into everyday life in Russia, and other platforms rely on its digital infrastructure. 

Many people took to social media to say they could not book a taxi or order food. Others could not open files on the company's storage service. Some even struggled to get into their homes after their digital keys went offline.

Most Yandex services have been coming back online. But three people told NBC News they were locked out of their spending money and savings for days because of disruption to Yandex Pay, a digital payment service many Russians use.

Viktoria, a 30-year-old barista from Moscow, told NBC she plans to stop using Yandex altogether. She described the outages as the last straw after other recent problems. 

Three taxi drivers in Moscow also spoke to NBC News. They use Yandex's taxi app to take orders and get paid. All three said they could not see how much they were earning or withdraw their earnings during the outage. One driver said the app showed error messages and sometimes sent several cars to the same customer.

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Yandex Responds And Kremlin Plays It Down

Yandex said on October 9 that no employees were hurt and that it was working to restore services. "Data centres are the iron heart of Yandex," the company said. "Their operation is critical for services that have become part of people's everyday lives."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was asked whether the government was looking at financial help for those affected. He said it was premature to talk about government support because Yandex is "facing difficulties" but is "strong and powerful." 

Yandex was not the only target. Data centres belonging to Russia's biggest bank, Sberbank, and the tech company VK have also been targeted in recent days.

Russia has stepped up its own attacks on Ukrainian data centres. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Moscow of trying to "leave Ukrainians without the internet." He said in a speech last week that Ukraine was returning those strikes by hitting Yandex.

Ukraine is under pressure from the United States to stop strikes on Russian energy infrastructure and keep Russian diesel flowing to global markets, which makes data centres a fresh target.