Following Vladimir Putin’s call to reject Western services, the head of the Ministry of Digitization proposed to ban Google and Microsoft cloud services in Russia.
In Russia it is necessary to gradually restrict the work of foreign cloud services, which have domestic analogs, said the head of the Ministry of Digifra of the Russian Federation Maksut Shadaev. “De facto, these are services that we take from under the floor from foreign companies, which, in general, have stopped their work. Yes, certainly the conflict of user habits. But if the companies do not operate [in Russia], if they have defiantly left, it is strange that we continue to pay for these services,” Shadaev said at the TAdviser Summit.
According to him, there is a difficult economic situation in Russia, against the background of which large customers “cut” IT budgets. At the same time, limiting the work of foreign cloud services will give Russian companies “an opportunity to get additional earnings,” the minister emphasized. Shadaev also recalled that Russian President Vladimir Putin on May 26 called for “strangling” Western IT services that had announced their departure from the country but actually remained on the Russian market. “The president said, we will strangle,” Shadaev said.
Among Russian companies, the most popular foreign cloud services are Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others. Since January 2022, Russia has had a “landing” law that obliges IT companies with a daily audience of more than 500,000 users to open a branch in the country. Those who refuse to comply with the requirements are threatened with a ban on advertising, acceptance of payments from Russian individuals and legal entities and other restrictions, up to and including the blocking of the resource in Russia.
Apple, AliExpress, the owners of the Likeme and Viber services have complied with the requirements of this law. Google, TikTok, Zoom and others have partially “landed”. At the same time, Telegram, Discord and Wikimedia did not fulfill any of the requirements. Last April, Roskomnadzor for the first time began blocking access to the resources of foreign companies that have not “landed” in Russia. Then it affected the cloud service Kamatera, as well as hosting providers WPEngine, HostGator.com, Network Solutions, DreamHost, Bluehost, Ionos and DigitalOcean. In October, Roskomnadzor blocked Discord because the messenger failed to remove illegal content and ignored the imposed fine.