Inside the Operation That Helped Ukraine Reverse Some Russian War Gains

ยฉ Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

ยฉ Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

ยฉ Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

ยฉ Jeff Swensen for The New York Times

ยฉ Doug Mills/The New York Times

ยฉ Doug Mills/The New York Times

ยฉ Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

ยฉ Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

ยฉ Alex Kent/The New York Times
Russian tech companies are scrambling to harden and hide their data centers underground after Ukrainian drone strikes damaged facilities housing AI supercomputers and disrupted cloud services for millions of Russian users. Meanwhile, the Kremlin is requiring data center owners to reserve computing capacity for emergency state needs and has even authorized possible use of foreign data centers.
These consequences of Russia's war against Ukraine come as the Russian military has bombarded Ukrainian cities with drones and missiles nearly night and day in recent months, along with specifically targeting Ukrainian data centers since late September. But Ukraine has retaliated with its own drone strikes on military and infrastructure targets across Russia, degrading or knocking out data centers operated by Russian tech giant Yandex, the state-owned bank Sberbank, social media site VKontakte, and the Russian Ministry of Finance.
Now, state-owned telecommunications company Rostelcom has raised the possibility of moving some Russian data centers underground in talks with the nickel and palladium mining company Norilsk, according to Russian newspaper Vedomosti. The industry publication Data Center Dynamics also pointed to a recent proposal by a Russian regional governor to build data centers within open-pit coal minesย while planting green public parks above as camouflage.


ยฉ Alexander Manzyuk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

ยฉ Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times

ยฉ Reuters

ยฉ Reuters

ยฉ Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

ยฉ Agence France-Presse, via Ukrainian Emergency Service


ยฉ Pool photo by Anastasia Barashkova

ยฉ Johanna-Maria Fritz for The New York Times

ยฉ The New York Times

ยฉ The New York Times

ยฉ Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times