Putin Decree Opens Foreign Data Centers After Ukrainian Drone Strikes

President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday permitting Russian companies to run IT workloads in foreign data centers, reversing a longstanding prohibition on hosting business outside the country. The decision follows Ukrainian drone strikes that knocked out three Yandex facilities and hit the Russian finance ministry's own data center.

What does the decree change?

Russian companies have until now been banned from doing business with data center operators abroad. The new decree lifts that ban conditionally: any company seeking a deal with a foreign data center operator must first obtain permission from the Federal Security Service (FSB).

The decree carries a second, domestic obligation. Russian data center operators must make 10 percent of their capacity available to support government operations. Commercial clients can continue to use all of an operator's capacity — until the state calls. Operators must turn servers over for government use at 24 hours' notice.

In plain terms: Russian firms can now seek shelter abroad, but only with FSB sign-off, and domestic operators have become a reserve pool for the state.

Which facilities were hit?

The immediate trigger was a series of drone attacks last month on three data centers operated by Yandex, the Moscow-based tech giant, as DCD reported:

• Yandex DC Sasovo — suffered a fire in the strike, bringing operations down at the facility.
• Kaluga data center — struck in the same campaign.
• Vladimir data center — an attack halted services at the site.

The finance ministry's data center was also hit. The strikes degraded Yandex's operations and pushed the company to limit its services.

Kyiv's forces have targeted Russian infrastructure as retaliation for Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the war that followed.

What is the wider context?

The Russian campaign mirrors, in reverse, months of concerted Russian bombing of Ukrainian data centers. Facilities in and around Kyiv operated by Parkovyi Data Center, UTELS, MiroHost, Datagroup, Vodafone Ukraine, De Novo, Cosmonova, Omega Telecom, Ukrsibbank, GigaCenter and Ukrtelecom have all been hit by Russian forces in recent months.

Strikes have extended beyond the capital. In southern Ukraine, the Tenet facility in Odesa and the RX-Name data center in the Nikolaev/Mykolaiv region have also been targeted.

What mitigation has Russia considered?

Russian officials have reportedly discussed measures to protect the country's data center estate. Options on the table include:

• Building "doomsday" data centers hardened against attack
• Siting facilities in disused coal mines
• Relocating capacity to friendly neighboring territories

None of these options has been confirmed as adopted; the decree published Monday is the first concrete policy response.

Russia's data infrastructure now runs under a dual regime: state-requisitioned capacity at home, FSB-vetted hosting abroad.