Private operators of Russia data centres have 10 days to set aside a tenth of their space and capacity that the state can call on at a day’s notice. The rule comes from Decree No. 802, which Vladimir Putin signed on 2 November and which was published on Russia’s official legal portal the same day, taking effect immediately.
The decree is about keeping Russian online services running when facilities fail. It creates a pool of spare capacity across the commercial data-centre market, and a government body that can order it switched over to support Russian-owned websites and services. The Kremlin’s announcement put it in one line: data-centre owners must reserve 10 per cent of space and capacity for Russian information resources “if necessary” (TSN translation).
In brief
- Non-state data centres in Russia must reserve 10% of their space and capacity, which they can keep using until a government subcommission calls on it.
- Once it does, the capacity must be handed over within a day, at a fee no higher than the subcommission’s cap. The decree also allows temporary use of computing capacity abroad, with FSB agreement.
- The subcommission does not exist yet, and the decree sets no deadline for the rules that will govern it.
How the reserve works for Russia data centres
According to the decree text, the duty falls on owners of data centres located in Russia, except those run by federal or regional state bodies, local government, and state or municipal unitary enterprises and institutions. They must reserve 10% of their “available space and capacity” no later than 10 days after the decree takes effect.
The reserve is not left empty. In TSN’s translation of the decree, “the reserved space and capacity continue to be used by such data centres” until a decision is taken. Once it is, the space and capacity “must be provided within one day of the date that decision is taken”.
The decision belongs to a new body: a subcommission for the uninterrupted operation of IT and communications facilities, under the government commission on digital development. The subcommission also sets the maximum fee operators can charge for the capacity they hand over. The government has been told to form it and to approve its rules, including how it decides when reserved capacity must be released.
Foreign capacity allowed, with FSB agreement
A separate clause allows the “temporary use” of computing capacity located outside Russia to keep Russian information resources running, on a subcommission decision agreed with the Federal Security Service (FSB). The decree does not name any country where that capacity might be.
Two further tasks go to the Ministry of Digital Development. It must count the free space and capacity in the country’s non-state data centres, and approve “mandatory requirements for owners of information resources on ensuring the reliability and uninterrupted functioning of their information resources” (TSN translation). The decree does not say which owners those requirements will cover.
Operators say the plan was not discussed with them
Russian business daily Vedomosti reported that a representative of the data-centre industry association said the mechanism had not been discussed with the market in advance. According to the paper, the association said commercial sites are mostly full, so it is unclear where operators should find the reserve or how they would free capacity from existing customers.
Vedomosti also noted that state-owned joint-stock companies and limited companies are not among the exemptions, and that the decree sets no deadlines for the government and ministry tasks, even though the 10% duty is already in force. An analyst it quoted estimated the reserve could cover 7,000 to 8,000 racks and up to 50MW of IT load, and said handing capacity over within a day would be technically difficult, because deploying servers, switching networks and testing take from several days to several weeks.
Why now: data centres in the line of fire
The decree’s preamble gives its reason as “the need to take urgent measures in response to unfriendly actions by certain foreign states” (TSN translation). It does not mention drone strikes.
DatacenterDynamics reported that the decree follows Ukrainian drone strikes on data centres operated by Yandex. TSN covered the strikes that left Yandex Cloud in “limited mode” in October, and a strike on Sberbank’s data centre, which the bank said did not disrupt its systems.
Ukraine’s data centres have been hit too. Datagroup said a Russian strike destroyed its Kyiv data centre beyond repair, and GigaCenter said its Kyiv site was critically damaged and put out of action, with the companies around it failing over to backup sites.
A resilience rule written as an emergency power
Seen as infrastructure policy, the decree is a capacity-reserve rule. Instead of asking each service owner to build its own backup, the state ring-fences a slice of the whole commercial market and decides who gets it when something fails. The Ukrainian operators TSN has covered show the alternative: each company falling back on backup sites it arranged itself.
The weak points are in the detail the decree leaves out. A reserve that operators keep using is only useful if it can be emptied quickly, and the one-day handover is exactly the step that, by Vedomosti’s account, the industry and an analyst doubt. A capped fee also shifts part of the cost of resilience onto private operators, at a moment when they say their halls are already full.
The foreign-capacity clause cuts the other way. It accepts that some Russian services may need to run outside the country for a while, but puts every such move behind the FSB’s agreement. For a compliance reader, that combination matters most: a reserve duty already in force, a decision-maker not yet formed, and reliability rules for service owners with no scope or date. Until the subcommission’s rules appear, operators know what they must hold back, but not when, why or for whom they will have to release it.
What happens next
The first test is the 10-day reserve deadline. After that, the government has to form the subcommission and publish its rules, and the digital ministry has to set out which service owners face the new reliability requirements.
Sources
- Official Internet Portal of Legal Information: Decree No. 802 of 2 November 2026 (Russian)
- Kremlin: Decree on temporary measures to ensure support for the functioning of information resources, 2 November 2026 (Russian)
- ConsultantPlus: full text of Decree No. 802 (Russian)
- DatacenterDynamics: Putin gives Russian companies permission to use foreign data centers after Ukraine drone strikes, 3 November 2026
- Vedomosti: data-centre owners ordered to reserve 10% of capacity within 10 days, 3 November 2026 (Russian)
Related stories
- Drone Strikes on Three Yandex Datacenters Leave Yandex Cloud in “Limited Mode” and Yandex Pay Offline, The Register Reports
- Ukrainian Drones Hit Sberbank’s Data Centre, Russia’s Biggest, Without Disrupting Operations
- Datagroup Says Russian Strike Destroyed Its Kyiv Data Centre
- Russian Strike Knocks Out Kyiv’s GigaCenter Data Centre, Company Says
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