Ukraine’s Drones Force Russia to Bury Its Servers

Ukrainian drone strikes have damaged facilities housing artificial intelligence supercomputers, disrupting cloud services for millions of Russian users and accelerating a push to move data centers underground.

The pressure stems directly from the ongoing war. While Russian forces have bombarded Ukrainian cities with drones and missiles nearly nightly, they specifically targeted Ukrainian data centers starting in late September. In response, Ukraine struck military and infrastructure targets across Russia, degrading or knocking out systems operated by Yandex, Sberbank, VKontakte, and the Russian Ministry of Finance.

State-owned telecommunications company Rostelcom is now discussing the possibility of relocating some data centers underground with Norilsk, a nickel and palladium mining company, according to the newspaper Vedomosti. Industry publication Data Center Dynamics noted a separate proposal by a regional governor to build data centers inside open-pit coal mines, with green public parks planted above them for camouflage.

The Kremlin is also tightening control over the sector. On November 2, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree requiring data center operators to reserve 10 percent of available space and computing capacity for government use, according to Meduza. Authorities have also authorized the potential use of foreign data centers for state needs.

These moves reflect growing concern about the vulnerability of Russian cloud computing. Ukrainian drones have demonstrated the ability to reach facilities far from the front lines that were previously considered safe.