Putin demands Russian data centers supply capacity to the state in wake of Ukraine drone attacks

Owners of non-state data centers in Russia have been told to hold back 10% of their capacity, ready to aid the country's state-owned IT infrastructure should the need arise. That's the message from President Vladimir Putin, with the aim of quickly unlocking additional data center compute capacity in the future if it becomes needed by the state, reports Reuters.

This comes as Russian data centers have become targets for Ukrainian drone attacks in recent weeks, causing huge amounts of damage and affecting state-owned internet services. In early October, drones struck Russia's largest data center in what was the second such attack in as many days. The huge 63-megawatt facility was so badly damaged that multiple modules had to be removed from service completely. At the time, users reported problems with Yandex Mail, Disk, Documents, Pay, and Market despite Yandex claiming that key services remained up and running. Two weeks later, Russia's finance ministry's data center was damaged after Ukrainian drones targeted the facility. It was reportedly home to Russia's tax databases as well as other state registry data.

Now, Putin has told the Digital Development Ministry to inventory all available data center capacity and floor space at privately owned facilities throughout the country. A new government commission will be given the power to order the release of reserved data center capacity. Once ordered to do so, third-party data center owners will have 24 hours to comply. The temporary use of data centers located outside Russia has also been mooted, pending the approval of Russia's Federal Security Service. (FSB)

It isn't just drones that have been targeting Russian data centers. On the same day that news broke of the country's plan to siphon data center capacity from third parties, the Russian Federal State Statistics Service admitted that its servers were hit by cyberattacks that saw 23TB of data stolen. It's reported that the haul includes new data on Russian wartime losses marked “for official use only.”

Data centers have become a target for Russia, too. It bombed Ukrainian facilities in September of this year, resulting in the loss of internet connectivity for 100,000 households. At the time, a government official noted that Ukraine's internet network is highly decentralized before admitting that users should expect local disruptions to service.

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