Russia’s AI Ambitions Take a Hit With Ukrainian Data Center Strikes

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Ukrainian drone strikes on data centers operated by Sber and Yandex in October have added to the challenges facing Russia’s AI industry, which was already struggling to secure the…

Ukrainian drone strikes on data centers operated by Sber and Yandex in October have added to the challenges facing Russia’s AI industry, which was already struggling to secure the chips and electricity it needs to expand.

The Kremlin is betting that AI can boost productivity and offset a labor shortage driven by demographic decline and worsened by the Ukraine war and exodus of skilled workers. President Vladimir Putin has placed AI at the heart of his push to revive investment and spur long-term growth, calling for Russia to develop its own “sovereign” infrastructure and standards.

The facilities hit in October accounted for roughly 11% of Russia’s data center capacity. While most services have been restored, the Kommersant newspaper reported that fully repairing the damage could take up to six months.

Yandex said Tuesday that it had restored access to about 97% of the cloud customer data affected by the strikes and that the remaining 3% was permanently lost.

An online teacher told The Moscow Times that Progressme, a platform she uses to teach and that runs on Yandex services, was still experiencing disruptions as of this month. She, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

At a first glance, Russia appears well-poised to launch an AI boom. The country has vast territory, abundant energy resources and a deep pool of tech talent.

But even before the strikes, limited grid capacity in its biggest cities, high construction costs and shortages of advanced chips had slowed the expansion of the data centers needed to train and run AI models.

Moscow and St. Petersburg together host about 80% of Russia’s data centers, and their power grids are approaching capacity. Some developers are choosing to build their own power plants to secure electricity, adding to upfront costs.

Tech giant Yandex, which develops the YandexGPT model, said last year that it was struggling to secure enough electricity to expand its AI infrastructure.

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