Putin orders Russia's private data centres to hold 10% of capacity in reserve for the state

Vladimir Putin signed a decree on 2 November requiring owners of private data centres in Russia to keep 10% of their available space and capacity in reserve for the state. The text presents the measure as a temporary, urgent response to what it calls unfriendly actions by certain foreign states, and is meant to keep Russian information resources running if facilities are knocked out.

What the decree requires

According to Meduza and the Russian-language service of The Moscow Times, the decree took effect immediately and gives operators 10 days to comply. A subcommittee of the government commission on digital development will decide when reserved capacity is released, and operators must then provide it within one day. The fee they can charge is capped at a level the subcommittee will set.

The Ministry of Digital Development must compile an inventory of free space and capacity in non-state data centres, Reuters reported, as cited by Ukrainska Pravda, and The Moscow Times adds that it must also set mandatory reliability requirements. The decree also allows temporary use of data centres located abroad, but only with the consent of the FSB security service. Sergey Boyarsky, who chairs the State Duma's information policy committee, described the reserve to RIA Novosti as extra insurance against external attacks.

Why it matters for AI compute

The order follows a series of Ukrainian drone strikes in October on data centres operated by Yandex, Sber and VK. Al Jazeera reported that an 8 October attack shut down Yandex's hub in Sasovo, Ryazan region, which housed two of the three supercomputers the company uses to develop its AI models; a Kaluga site was partly put out of action the next day. Yandex later said a data centre near Vladimir had been shut down after another attack.

The Moscow Times cites a Kommersant source saying Yandex's three supercomputers account for 73% of Russia's supercomputer capacity, with Sber providing another 23%. It also quotes IKS-Consulting estimating unmet demand for data centre infrastructure at 150–200 megawatts even before the strikes, so a 10% reserve would come out of an already tight market.

Open questions

The decree does not explicitly mention artificial intelligence, and it is not yet clear whether reserved capacity would cover GPU clusters used for model training or mainly general hosting. The procedures of the new subcommittee, the fee ceiling and how quickly operators can actually free up space have not been published.