Russian companies seek foreign data center capacity after Ukrainian strikes

Russian companies are increasingly seeking capacity at data centers abroad, especially over the past month, Russian state-controlled media outlet Kommersant reported on Nov. 10.

Demand for foreign data center capacity, particularly for facilities in Kazakhstan, has risen noticeably, Yevgeny Svidersky, vice president of cloud services at ITGlobal.com, told Kommersant.

While some Russian companies have already begun migrating services abroad, others are seeking foreign data centers solely to back up their existing infrastructure, Kommersant reported.

The shift comes amid an exchange of data center strikes by Russia and Ukraine, triggered by Russia's latest campaign to damage Ukraine's economy and make civilian life harder.

On Sept. 23, a Russian attack damaged a Kyiv data center housing network equipment for internet provider UTELS, causing service disruptions. The attack also affected cloud service Fex.net and disrupted internet access for about 100,000 households in Kyiv. Since then, Russia has increasingly targeted Ukraine's digital infrastructure.

Between Oct. 8 and Oct. 18, Ukrainian drones retaliated and struck three Yandex data centers, a Sberbank facility under construction, and a data center belonging to social media platform VK. The attacks prompted Russian authorities to consider additional protection measures, including underground data centers.

The consequences of Ukraine's strikes on Russian data centers could extend far beyond disrupted banking and online services, potentially setting back the country's AI development and affecting military technology.

Yandex and Sberbank are both major players in Russia's AI development, while the state plays a central role in the sector. Russia also recently announced plans to share drone attack data with developers to train neural networks and algorithms, according to Samuel Bendett, an expert on Russian military technology at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA).

While Russia's military AI programs have traditionally operated separately from commercial developers, they still depend on some of the same computing resources, advanced chips, and civilian specialists. Western sanctions also complicate replacing damaged equipment.

Ukraine's strikes added pressure to an already strained domestic data center market, where available cloud resources are nearly 90% occupied, according to Kommersant. On Nov. 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree requiring privately owned data centers to reserve 10% of their capacity for Russian information resources, which authorities can requisition within 24 hours if needed.