Rostelecom in talks with Norilsk Nickel on underground data centers

Rostelecom, Russia's partially state-owned telecoms operator, is in advanced talks with mining giant Norilsk Nickel to build data centers underground, Vedomosti reports. The push follows repeated Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian data center facilities.

The move isn't speculative. Rostelecom vice president Valeriy Ermakov has previously called for "doomsday" data centers — hardened facilities built to survive physical attack.

Norilsk Nickel, the world's largest producer of refined nickel, brings obvious assets to the table: existing mines and its own power plants. The company itself is not sanctioned. Its controlling shareholder, Vladimir Potanin, is. The US and UK have already banned imports of Russian-origin aluminum, copper, and nickel, which limits Norilsk's Western options regardless.

Why put a data center underground?

The logic is simple. Depth defeats drones. Years into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, data centers have become legitimate wartime targets on both sides.

Ukrainian drones have struck Yandex data centers at least three times. Facilities run by Sberbank and VK have also been hit. Earlier this year, Ukrainian forces struck a data center in Prymorsk, in Russian-occupied Ukraine.

Russia has returned fire. Recent months saw strikes on Kyiv-area facilities operated by Parkovyi Data Center, MiroHost, Datagroup, Vodafone Ukraine, De Novo, Cosmonova, Omega Telecom, Ukrsibbank, and Ukrtelecom. Outside the capital, Tenet's facility in Odesa and the RX-Name data center near Mykolaiv were hit too.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the targeting logic directly. "We always respond in kind. As for data centers, you all know, they have been and continue to attack our data centers. We've responded," he said.

What does this change for Russia's infrastructure plans?

It puts disused industrial sites in play. Last month, Kemerovo Oblast governor Ilya Seredyuk proposed placing data centers in abandoned coal pits. The coal sector has slowed sharply, so the scheme would prop up a struggling local industry while hardening the facilities themselves.

Rostelecom already runs its own cloud service, so underground capacity would slot into an existing commercial portfolio rather than a greenfield bet.

There's also a geopolitical wrinkle. Kirill Dmitriev, special envoy to the Russian president, claimed in October that a joint US-Russia data center initiative is under discussion, with several Russian companies "actively participating." Washington has not confirmed any such talks.

For now, the concrete development is domestic: a telecoms operator with war-damaged peers negotiating with a nickel miner for subterranean capacity.