Vladimir Putin has given Russian companies permission to run IT workloads in foreign data centers, following a series of Ukrainian drone strikes targeting digital infrastructure.. Russian President Putin issued a decree on Monday following successful attacks by Ukrainian aircraft on a trio of data centers operated by Moscow-based tech giant Yandex, which has limited its operations..
Yandex data centers have been hit by Ukrainian drone strikes – WikiFido/Wikimedia. Forces from Kyiv have been targeting Russia’s infrastructure as part of its retaliation for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent war between the two countries.. The presidential decree said businesses wishing to do deals with foreign data center operators must seek permission from the Federal Security Service (FSB).
Russian companies have been banned from doing business outside the country.. It also orders Russian data center operators to make 10 percent of their capacity available to support government operations.. According to the decree, data center firms can continue to use all their capacity for commercial clients, but must turn servers over for government use at 24 hours’ notice..
As reported by DCD, drone strikes last month impacted Yandex DC Sasovo, which suffered a fire as a result, bringing operations down at the facility, as well as the company’s data center in Kaluga. An attack on its Vladimir data center also brought services to a halt at that facility..
Russia’s finance ministry also saw its data center hit as part of the campaign.. The attacks follow concerted Russian bombing of data centers in Ukraine. Facilities around Kyiv operated by Parkovyi Data Center, UTELS, MiroHost, Datagroup, Vodafone Ukraine, De Novo, Cosmonova, Omega Telecom, Ukrsibbank, GigaCenter, and Ukrtelecom have been hit by Russian forces in recent months..
Outside Kyiv, facilities operated by Tenet in Odesa and the RX-Name data center in the Nikolaev/Mykolaiv area of southern Ukraine have also been hit.. Russian officials have apparently discussed mitigating measures for attacks on its data centers, ranging from building “doomsday” data centers to siting facilities in disused coal mines or friendly neighboring territories..
01 Jun 2026
