Russian businesses are urgently seeking overseas data centers following attacks by Ukrainian drones

Russian companies have begun actively seeking backup capacity in foreign data centers following successful drone attacks on Russia’s digital infrastructure in October. Kazakhstan and Belarus have become the primary destinations for data replication and migration. 

The main reason for the surge in business demand for overseas hosting was the high risk of repeat attacks and prolonged disruptions to Russian servers. In October, data centers belonging to Yandex, VK, Sberbank, and the Russian Federal Tax Service were targeted in six regions: Vladimir, Kaluga, Leningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Ryazan, and Saratov. 

The situation is complicated by a shortage of domestic computing resources—cloud capacity in Russia is utilized at nearly 90%, and in Moscow, only about 50 MW of free capacity remains, which is insufficient to redistribute the load.

Source: Kommersant.

Russia has decided to locate data centers underground in response to Ukrainian attacks. This approach is intended to protect digital infrastructure from attacks, though details regarding the scale and timeline for implementing this plan have not been specified.

As a reminder, a key data center of the tax service was attacked in Russia.

Prior to that, a data center in occupied Donetsk was attacked, and telecommunications infrastructure was damaged.