A Russian decree requires Federal Security Service (FSB) agreement on subcommission decisions for temporary use of foreign computing capacity as companies seek backup sites after reported attacks.
President Vladimir Putin signed the measure Nov. 2. Covered data-center owners have 10 days from its effective date to set aside one-tenth of their current space and capacity. They may keep using the reserve, but must make it available within one day after the special government subcommission decides to call on it. For Russian information resources to rely temporarily on computing capacity based abroad, the panel must approve the arrangement and the FSB must agree. EconoTimes previously covered the domestic reserve rule.
Kommersant reported Nov. 10 that demand for overseas data-center capacity had risen over the previous month, with Kazakhstan among the destinations. Yevgeny Svidersky, ITGlobal.com’s vice president for cloud services, told the newspaper that companies were seeking failover sites with independent power supplies and network connections. The newspaper also cited two unnamed sources who said some firms had begun shifting services; it gave no company names or volume figures.
Kommersant said market participants estimated that nearly 90% of Russia’s available cloud resources were occupied. AvanDoc’s Alexey Borshchov told the newspaper inquiries about some data centers were about 50% higher in July-October 2026 than in January-June 2026. ITGLOBAL.COM said Oct. 15 it planned to add enough computing resources at facilities in Almaty, Minsk and Tashkent to double capacity within a month, citing increased requests for infrastructure outside Russia.
Yandex said a drone attack on the night of Oct. 7-8 seriously damaged its Sasovo data center and halted operations there. The company also reported infrastructure damage in Kaluga and said an Oct. 11 attack stopped its Vladimir center. Yandex did not identify the attacker. The Associated Press separately attributed the October strikes to Ukrainian drones and reported attacks on facilities associated with Sberbank and VK. EconoTimes previously reported on the Yandex data-center strikes.
The decree does not expressly authorize general storage of personal-data databases abroad. Federal Law No. 152-FZ requires specified operations on personal data collected from Russian citizens to use databases located in Russia, subject to statutory exceptions.
The decree gives the government responsibility for forming the subcommission and tasks the Digital Development Ministry with assessing free capacity at covered sites. It sets no deadline for either step.
