Russian strongman Vladimir Putin described a plan on Thursday to build networks of data storage and processing centers in the country’s Arctic, alongside “small nuclear power plants” developed to feed the data centers energy.
Putin made the revelation during an appearance at the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF), an event highlighting investments and business plans for eastern Russia held in the far-east city of Vladivostok. While development of the Arctic to build data centers has already become a popular idea globally, as the cold means the centers require less energy to keep the hardware from overheating, Putin’s comments follow growing interest, particularly from China, in the Arctic for other uses such as redirecting global shipping threatened in the Middle East by Iranian terrorism. It also follows Putin holding a meeting last month to specifically address Russia’s national security interests in the Arctic region.
According to the Russian news agency Tass, Putin stated that his government is planning the construction of data centers both in the Arctic and in other areas of the Russian Far East. To power them, the Russian government is seeking to dramatically expand nuclear power resources in the region.
“New power generation facilities are set to appear in the Arctic zone, including small nuclear power plants that have no analogues in the world,” Tass quoted Putin as saying. “Notably, nuclear energy plays a key role in the development of the digital platform economy, including AI tools and data storage and processing centers.”
The Russian government is moving to expand construction of data centers in the context of a larger global race to dominate AI technology. The new centers will have to conform to a Russian “sovereign AI” law that took effect on September 1 and imposes a variety of restrictions and oversight on technology companies regarding the building and management of artificial intelligence resources. Among those restrictions are limits on the introduction of foreign overseers of the technology, mandates that the data being used for these projects be stored in data centers in Russia, and a commitment that AI technology adopt “traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.” The law also reportedly expands government investment and support for AI development.
While considered among the world’s most technologically advanced nations, some evidence in the past year has surfaced indicating that Russia is struggling to compete financially with other powers investing heavily in AI, such as America and China.
According to a study published in June by the consulting firm Tekhexpo and research group PKR, Russia at the time had 128 data center projects, described as being “in various stages of development;” 42 of them are reportedly being actively constructed. The two firms found, however, as the Moscow Times explained, that “between May 2023 and May 2026, the number of data center projects under active construction fell 41.6%, while investment in those projects declined 26.3%.” The report also found that Russia had suspended construction of 38 data center projects in the last three years. While the report did not suggest an explanation for this decline in investment and construction slowdown, Russia has been mired in a grueling, expensive invasion of neighboring Ukraine since 2022, one that has resulted in significant sanctions on Russian enterprise in the Western world and limitations on Russia’s access to the global financial system.
In the Arctic, Russia may soon find that many other northern nations have identified the potential for data center development. In November, Arctic Today reported that a race had already begun to identify suitable places to build data centers in the region, as “cooling alone accounts for 30–55% of a data center’s total electricity use” and these costs decline substantially if the data center is located in icy terrain. On the other side of the Arctic, Scandinavia has emerged as a preferred location for building datacenters, reportedly welcoming as many as 50 such projects throughout the Nordic countries, more than any other region of Europe.
Visiting the site of a to-be-constructed data center in Norway in June, Time magazine observed that the location is also suitable because it is sparsely populated and, thus, the data centers will have minimal competition in consumption of energy.
“Northern Norway has an abundance of surplus energy. Vast dams dot the mountainous landscape, supplying nearby hydropower plants with plentiful water, the gravitational energy of which is harvested for cheap electricity,” the magazine observed. “This region has roughly a spare gigawatt of unused power, according to the company that runs the Norwegian grid—roughly enough to power a small city.”
Putin’s announcement on Thursday was the latest in a series of indications that the Russian government is interested in developing the Arctic. In late August, shortly after the Chinese government began boasting of using an “Arctic Silk Road” to ship goods outside of the reach of Iranian terrorist organizations, Putin held a Russian Security Council meeting specifically on national security in the Arctic. The Kremlin offered few details on the meeting, but explained that the objective was to discuss “the development strategy for Russia’s Arctic Zone and steps to ensure the national security in the Arctic.”