Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the datacentre sector in Russia, which was experiencing rapid growth, faced challenges due to Western sanctions and the departure of US tech companies like Apple and Microsoft.
Google’s disconnection from Russian traffic exchange points raised concerns about the impact on access to Google services for Russian users in March 2025.
The departure of foreign cloud providers and equipment manufacturers created a compute capacity shortage in Russia, as domestic providers struggled to meet the demands of the digital economy.
Key Point estimates that Russia will need 30,000 racks of datacentre capacity annually for the next five years, but the cost of building datacentres has increased significantly.
Major Russian banks, like Sberbank and T-Bank, are facing challenges in finding suitable locations for their datacentres and are considering building their own facilities.
Datacentre operators are exploring locations outside Moscow and St Petersburg to address the capacity deficit, while also looking to co-locate near renewable energy sources.
As AI usage grows, the energy-intensive nature of AI workloads puts pressure on datacentre operators to meet increasing compute demands.
Solving energy consumption ‘not easy’
Addressing the energy consumption challenges of AI datacentres is a complex task, according to Alexander Kraynov of Yandex, as the world faces electricity shortages.
Russian datacentres have consumed 2.6GW of energy, equivalent to 1% of the country’s total capacity, with the need for additional equipment and systems to support AI workloads.
Russia’s prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, notes an increase in domestic production of datacentre equipment to meet supply demands.
Government support for datacentres
The Russian government plans to provide financial support to the datacentre industry to overcome long payback periods for projects.
Possible measures include subsidizing interest rates on loans for datacentre developers and operators, although new regulations have made it harder to establish new facilities.
The government’s intervention aims to prevent servers from being installed in residential areas, but may prolong the construction cycle and hinder the market’s growth potential.
