Putin Orders Russian Data Centers to Reserve 10% of Capacity

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree requiring owners of private data centers in the country to reserve 10% of their space and capacity for government use. The document, on temporary measures to support the "functioning of information resources", has been published on the official legal acts portal.

How the reserve works

According to the decree, operators may keep using the reserved capacity themselves. But when the authorities decide to call on it, the data center must hand it over within 24 hours to support the operation of information resources inside Russia. A subcommission will set the maximum fee that can be charged for this service.

Capacity abroad

The same decree allows computing capacity outside Russia to be used temporarily in order to keep services running in the country. The decision will be taken by a subcommission of the government commission on digital development, in agreement with the FSB.

Context

The decree follows a series of attacks in October 2026, when drones struck three Yandex data centers as well as facilities belonging to VK and Sber. The document does not spell out a link to those incidents, but it sets up a mechanism for shifting workloads quickly if infrastructure is knocked out.

For data center operators, the main consequence is a standing obligation to keep a tenth of their resources available on short notice, which may limit how much capacity they can sell commercially. Details such as the fee ceiling and the procedure for triggering the reserve are still to be defined by the subcommission.