Following Ukrainian drone strikes that damaged facilities housing artificial intelligence supercomputers and disrupted cloud services, Russian technology companies are taking measures to hide their data centers underground. The infrastructure attacks, which have escalated alongside reciprocal strikes, left millions of Russian users experiencing significant service interruptions. Retaliatory operations by Ukraine have degraded or completely knocked out facilities operated by major entities, including the technology giant Yandex, state-owned bank Sberbank, social media platform VKontakte, and the Russian Ministry of Finance.
In response to the growing vulnerability of digital infrastructure, the Kremlin has mandated that data center operators reserve computing capacity for emergency state use. The government has also authorized the potential utilization of foreign data centers to maintain critical operations. State-owned telecommunications company Rostelcom is currently in talks with Norilsk, a nickel and palladium mining company, raising the possibility of relocating some Russian data centers into subterranean environments, according to the newspaper Vedomosti.
Creative camouflage methods are also being proposed at the regional level. The industry publication Data Center Dynamics pointed to a recent proposal by a Russian regional governor to construct data centers inside open-pit coal mines. To conceal these facilities from aerial reconnaissance, the proposal suggests planting green public parks directly above them. This architectural shift highlights the consequences of the ongoing conflict, as technological infrastructure becomes a primary target requiring extreme physical protection.