In Russia, Tax Agency Services Went Down Following Yandex

• 15.10.2026, 12:46

Following the Ukrainian attacks on data centers.

In Russia, services provided by the Federal Tax Service (FTS) went down on the morning of October 15, according to data from Downdetector. The number of complaints began to rise sharply after 5:00 a.m. Moscow time. Over the past 24 hours, up to 85,000 people have reported issues with the FTS system. By 12:00 p.m., more than 600 reports of problems accessing tax services had been posted on “Sboy.rf.” Users report being unable to connect to the service’s website, as well as being unable to log into their personal accounts and upload documents, according to The Moscow Times .

In October, the Russian internet had already experienced two large-scale outages due to attacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on data centers. On October 8, 9, and 11, Yandex facilities in Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast, Kaluga, and Vladimir came under attack. All of them partially or completely ceased operations, which led to the collapse of the company’s services, including “Yandex Go” and “Yandex Pay.” On October 14, Ukrainian drones attacked Sberbank’s data center in Balakovo, Saratov Oblast, for the first time. The bank confirmed the attack but stated that all services were operating normally. However, users across Russia complained that Sberbank’s website and app, its GigaChat neural network, the “Kontur” digital ecosystem for businesses, and other services were unavailable.

Following this, Rostelecom Vice Chairman Valery Ermakov called for to create a “doomsday” data center. “It’s a backup facility where, if the worst happens, you can always restore your services. It really was unimaginable a while back, but now it’s a very real need. The so-called ‘Doomsday’ data center is exactly what we need,” he said.

Yermakov noted that the IT infrastructure built in Russia prior to the war against Ukraine was designed for efficiency and centralization and did not account for the threat of airstrikes. According to him, companies are now forced to urgently transition to a distributed architecture, but this is hindered by congestion on the backbone network and the deterioration of fiber-optic cables laid 20–30 years ago.