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Rostelecom discusses underground data centers protected from drones

Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Published in SI: . Updated: .

Protecting compute infrastructure is shifting from a single backup server to distributed and underground sites, although such physical resilience substantially raises construction costs.

According to Vedomosti, the operator is considering underground sites and holding talks with Nornickel. The proposed protection has three layers: a backup center storing data copies, a distributed architecture across geographically separate locations, and underground facilities for the most critical workloads. Denis Patrikeev, lead consultant at iKS-Consulting, estimates construction will cost 30-40% more than an above-ground center of comparable capacity and reliability because of excavation, waterproofing and ventilation. He estimates a service life of 15-20 years. This is a plan under discussion, not an operating facility.

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History

Damage and strikes on data centers in Russia and Ukraine

24 events
  1. Rostelecom discusses underground data centers protected from dronesOpen now
  2. Yandex withdraws its 2026 revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance after the October attacks on its data centers
  3. Yandex: three supercomputers were not damaged in attacks on its data centers and are moving to new sites
  4. Russia's Ministry of Digital Development approves requirements for protecting data centers from drones: strategic ones are proposed to be placed underground
  5. Yandex restores clients' access to 90.47% of Yandex Cloud data after attacks on data centers; a new site started operating on October 23
  6. Ukrainian data centre GigaCenter in Dnipropetrovsk reports building damage and outages for clients
  7. Yandex restores the main functions of Yandex 360 and Direct after damage to data centers and promises a major update of Alice AI
  8. Operator Datagroup reports its Kyiv data center was completely destroyed in a strike on October 19; Russia's Defense Ministry named it as a target
  9. VK reports a drone attack on its data centre in the Leningrad region
  10. Yandex denies reports that insurance on its data centers had not been renewed by the time of the attacks
  11. Data centers have become targets of strikes in several conflicts; Putin said Russia has "started to respond", including against data centers
  12. Cloudflare: after the outage of Yandex networks, bots' share of global traffic did not change, and some automated requests moved to other providers
  13. Rostelecom deputy chairman proposes building backup "doomsday data centers" in Russia
  14. Yandex restores most functions of the Alice AI chat and smart devices; calls on Stations are still unavailable
  15. Sberbank reports drone attack on its data center in Balakovo; it says the bank's systems are working normally
  16. Yandex Pay partially restores transfers and payments after data centre damage; Peskov: the matter is being discussed in the government
  17. Automated traffic from Yandex's network fell 94%, Cloudflare data show; Zelensky links this to social media bots, experts do not read the data that way
  18. Shadaev: Russia's Ministry of Digital Development and Defense Ministry are working on protecting data centers
  19. Yandex restricts some Yandex 360 functions after drone strikes on three data centers
  20. Data centers are becoming targets in conflicts: Russia's Defense Ministry reports a strike on a data center in Odesa, a senior Iranian official threatens SI facilities in the region
  21. Yandex data center in Vladimir shut down after a drone attack — the company's third in a week
  22. Alice AI and Stations run with interruptions after damage to Yandex's two data centres
  23. Drones damage a second Yandex data centre in two days — several modules at Kaluga knocked out
  24. Yandex data center in Sasovo shut down after fire; company cannot confirm it can be restored