Russia's tech companies are moving data centers underground and the Kremlin is tightening control over computing capacity after Ukrainian drone strikes damaged facilities operated by Yandex, Sberbank, VKontakte, and the Russian Ministry of Finance.
Rostelcom, the state-owned telecommunications company, has discussed moving some data centers underground with Norilsk, a nickel and palladium mining company, according to Russian newspaper Vedomosti. A Russian regional governor also proposed building data centers inside open-pit coal mines with green parks planted above as camouflage, Data Center Dynamics reported.
On November 2, Putin signed a decree requiring Russian data center operators to reserve 10 percent of available space and capacity for government use, according to independent Russian news publication Meduza. The decree also allows a special government commission to authorize use of foreign data centers in consultation with Russia's Federal Security Service. This represents a shift from Russia's "Sovereign Internet Law," which previously blocked Russian companies from using cloud infrastructure outside Russia's borders.
The strikes have caused widespread disruptions. Yandex relocated all three of its main supercomputers after Ukrainian drone strikes targeted its AI data centers, Meduza reported. Payment apps, digital banking services, e-commerce platforms, video streaming, ride-hailing, and food delivery apps all experienced outages.
Ukraine's decentralized digital services have proved more resilient. The Ukrainian government migrated resources to European cloud regions with help from Amazon and Microsoft after Russia's February 2022 invasion. Ukraine also uses SpaceX's Starlink satellite terminals, paid for by the United States and European countries including Poland and Germany, as a backup communications system.