ALMATY – A disruption to Yandex’s taxi and delivery services on Oct. 11 left users across Kazakhstan struggling to book rides, highlighting the role digital platforms play in everyday mobility in the country’s largest cities. As passengers in Almaty and Astana sought alternative ways to reach their destinations, ride-hailing service inDrive reported a sharp increase in demand, creating an imbalance between passengers and available drivers.
Photo credit: The Astana Times.
The disruption affected the company’s taxi-booking and delivery platform, while users also reported problems with other Yandex products, including Yandex Music, Yandex Pay and Yandex Cloud. Technical problems appeared after a drone attack damaged a Yandex data center in the Russian Vladimir Region on Oct. 11, forcing the facility to shut down. The incident was followed by service interruptions in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia.
Yandex services have since resumed operation in Kazakhstan, although the company is continuing work to stabilize their performance. Technical teams are working to restore consistent service, but the company has not provided a definitive timeline for completing all recovery work.
In large cities, where people depend on a combination of buses, taxis and other transport options, these services perform interconnected roles. Public transport follows fixed routes and schedules, while ride-hailing offers door-to-door trips and can help cover journeys that are less convenient by bus. When a major platform becomes unavailable, finding a suitable alternative can be difficult, particularly when demand rises suddenly.
inDrive faces a surge in demand
The outage prompted passengers to turn to alternative ride-hailing services. Arsen Tomsky, founder and chief executive of inDrive, said the company had experienced a sharp increase in passengers and orders in Kazakhstan.
“Since this morning, inDrive in Kazakhstan has seen a sharp influx of passengers and orders. This creates an imbalance between supply and demand,” Tomsky wrote on Threads on Oct. 11.
He said the company had reduced its commissions to attract more drivers, bringing them down to the minimum required to cover mandatory taxes.
“Today, we will most likely further limit the bargaining range to curb excessive price increases,” Tomsky added.
Why an outage in Russia affected Kazakhstan
Yandex Go Kazakhstan said it operated in accordance with Kazakhstan’s legislation and that personal data belonging to Kazakh users was stored on servers in Kazakhstan and in jurisdictions providing appropriate data protection. However, the company explained that its digital products rely on distributed computing infrastructure, with individual components located in different countries.
“A failure in one of the infrastructure components in one country can affect the availability of certain functions in another,” Yandex Go representatives said.
The company said technical teams were working to restore affected services and redistribute workloads across its infrastructure. It did not provide an exact timeline for the full restoration of all functions.
Data localization does not guarantee uninterrupted services
Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development said servers used to store Kazakh users’ personal data were operating normally inside the country. The ministry stressed, however, that keeping personal data within Kazakhstan does not mean that every component of a digital platform operates independently of infrastructure abroad.
“Ensuring uninterrupted service is of primary importance to users. Therefore, storing data within Kazakhstan and ensuring the resilient operation of digital platforms are separate tasks that require a comprehensive solution,” reads the statement.
The ministry said it was working with Yandex and Kazakh infrastructure organizations to provide the necessary support for restoring services. It was also coordinating with other taxi and delivery platforms to help ensure their resilience under increased demand.
Urban mobility depends on more than one service
Public transport remains an important alternative for many journeys, but buses and taxis do not always serve the same needs. Fixed routes may work for regular commutes, while ride-hailing can be particularly useful for trips outside convenient public transport connections, late-night travel or journeys requiring a direct route.
The outage did not mean that public transport itself had failed. Rather, it illustrated how a problem affecting one part of the urban mobility system can create additional pressure elsewhere, especially when passengers turn to the same alternatives at once.
For drivers and couriers, the disruption also affected access to the platforms through which they receive orders and earn income. For passengers, it raised immediate questions about availability, waiting times and the cost of reaching their destinations.
With services back online in Kazakhstan, the focus has shifted from restoring access to ensuring stable operation. The disruption nevertheless exposed a broader challenge for digital services that have become part of everyday city life: keeping them reliable when technical problems in one location can affect users far beyond it.
