Belarusian Tutors in Panic: Due to Yandex Problems, They May Lose Materials Developed Over Years

As Nasha Niva learned, this primarily concerns the Russian online platform ProgressMe — where work disruptions began on October 10. This service allowed users to create and store educational materials (texts, audio, video, interactive exercises), conduct interactive lessons, and assign homework that students completed right there.

The online platform was especially popular among teachers of various languages.

ProgressMe also offered the option to purchase ready-made courses from other authors.

Tutors who actively use modern technologies had accumulated a rather large database of their own materials over years of work on the platform.

A foreign language teacher anonymously explained the situation to Nasha Niva: “Imagine a teacher who spent five years developing author's courses for different levels, recording voice messages for students, making selections of videos on certain topics… It's absolutely not a given that this person kept all that material on their computer for those five years. Now, among my acquaintances who are tutors, there are those who are simply horrified, because years of work have been lost — at least for now.”

In the ProgressMe Telegram channel, it was officially announced that the team managed to transfer 80% of user data — including various lessons and materials: “In parallel, we are working on restoring the platform on new server capacities to return your access to the familiar workspace as soon as possible. Most importantly, your materials have been saved; you don't have to worry about their safety.”

Павялічыць

The Edvibe service is also connected to ProgressMe — it's essentially the same platform, just oriented towards non-Russian-speaking users. Hypothetically, a tutor from Minsk could teach Russian to a student from Brazil through it. Currently, a message on the platform's website indicates that system login is temporarily unavailable. However, it states that user data is supposedly safe.

Another Russian service actively used by Belarusian tutors is Online Test Pad. It is more focused not on conducting online classes, but on checking knowledge. It was used to prepare for the Centralized Testing (CT). On the platform, a teacher could create tests with automatic checking, collect assignments, and track students' progress.

The online platform itself admits that it lost part of its data due to a drone attack on the night of October 8 — because its servers were located in a Yandex data center.

Павялічыць

“This caused our website to be unavailable. Unfortunately, data backups were located in the same data center, and at this moment, the possibility of their recovery remains questionable.”

Some part has already been recovered, but for now, it only concerns data for a few literal days in 2023 and 2024. And for 2026 — only data for August 18 regarding registered accounts. In short, a drop in the ocean.

Павялічыць

“It is currently not possible to provide an accurate assessment of the likelihood of recovery. Thousands of racks were located in the data center, each containing dozens of servers; the extent of their damage has not been determined. Yandex employees will process each server manually, which may take several months. Only after these works are completed will it be possible to determine whether data can be recovered from a specific server.”

The forecasts are not very optimistic — users are advised not to expect miracles: “Given the current circumstances, to avoid excessive expectations, we recommend proceeding on the assumption that the data is lost. If recovery still proves possible, it will be a pleasant exception for us and for you.”

They promise that user data will now be stored in different locations — but this is unlikely to provide much comfort to tutors who have lost their work.

Those who wish to stop using the paid version of the platform are promised a refund according to the tariff.

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