In October 2026, the Ukrainian Defense Forces carried out a series of strikes against data center facilities across six regions of the European part of Russia — Vladimir, Kaluga, Leningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Ryazan, and Saratov oblasts. The strikes hit infrastructure sites associated with the country's largest technology and financial companies: Yandex, VK, Sberbank, and the Federal Tax Service. According to RBC-Ukraine, citing United24, these attacks turned theoretical risks for the Russian IT sector into a real operational crisis, forcing businesses to seek backup facilities abroad.
Sharp Surge in Demand for Foreign Cloud Infrastructure
Evgeny Svidersky, Vice President of Cloud Services at ITGlobal.com, reported that Russian businesses have dramatically increased their demand for foreign data centers. According to him, companies are urgently reviewing their business continuity approaches and looking for backup sites independent of the network and energy infrastructure of their primary servers in Russia. Market sources confirm that some companies have already begun actually relocating workloads abroad. Kazakhstan has become the most attractive destination for hosting artificial intelligence infrastructure and backup systems, while sites in Belarus are also being actively considered.
Geographical Redundancy Instead of Full Relocation
Alexey Borshchev, business architect of AI projects at Avandok, clarifies that this is not a complete relocation of core infrastructure, but rather so-called geographical redundancy. According to him, market players are simultaneously looking for spare servers in Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, while cloud providers are negotiating with clients to distribute loads across multiple jurisdictions. This approach minimizes the risks of simultaneous data loss and ensures the operability of critical services even during repeated strikes on specific nodes.
Additional Pressure: Decree on Mandatory Capacity Reservation for the State
Additional pressure on an already strained market came from a decree by President Vladimir Putin requiring private data centers in Russia to reserve 10 percent of their capacities for state information resource needs. Operators were given 10 days to comply. Server owners can continue using these resources normally, but upon the first request of a special government subcommittee, they are obligated to transfer them to the state within 24 hours. For businesses already facing a shortage of computing power, this means a further narrowing of the available resource pool.
Geopolitical Resonance: Impact of Strikes Reaches Beyond Russia
The consequences of the October attacks extend beyond the domestic market. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly stated that following the strike on Yandex data centers, 60 percent of online activity directed against Israel from Russian users has disappeared. According to him, this demonstrates the scale of capabilities that exert such influence, and Israel is beginning to work in a similar direction. Netanyahu's statement, conveyed via the official IsraeliPM channel, became one of the first public confirmations by a third state that strikes on Russian IT infrastructure have measurable consequences outside its borders.
Complex Crisis: Shortages, Control, and the Threat of Repeat Strikes
Russian companies find themselves squeezed from three sides: a physical shortage of computing resources following the destruction of part of the infrastructure, tighter state control through mandatory capacity reservation for state customers, and the constant threat of new strikes that make any long-term investments in Russian sites risky. Under these conditions, the geographical distribution of loads between Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan is becoming not a strategic choice, but an operational necessity to preserve the functionality of key digital services.
