Russian Companies Seek Foreign Data Centers After Ukrainian Drone Strikes

• •Russian companies are migrating data operations abroad due to drone strikes.
• •Major data centers targeted include those of Yandex and Sberbank.
• •The Russian government is exploring AI data centers in Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Following drone attacks in October that targeted major Russian data centers, companies in Russia are increasingly looking for data center capacity abroad, particularly in Kazakhstan. Yevgeny Svidersky from ITGlobal.com reported a sharp rise in demand for foreign facilities, with some companies already migrating services. The attacks impacted data centers linked to Yandex, VK, Sberbank, and the Federal Tax Service, leading to a significant operational concern for Russian businesses. The Russian government is considering establishing AI data centers in 'friendly' countries like Belarus and Kazakhstan due to a domestic shortage of computing capacity. The situation has prompted discussions about geographic redundancy for data storage and backup systems. As of now, Russian data centers are nearly 90% occupied, and President Putin has mandated that private data centers reserve 10% of their capacity for state resources.