Russian telco Rostelecom has replaced all imported IT equipment in its data centers.

Local firm Yadro has been selected as the replacement provider.

Rostelecom president Mikhail Oseevky said it had been a ‘bloody path’ to replace the servers in the data center. He added: “This activity allowed us to 100 percent refuse imported equipment, which they do not sell to us, and for obvious reasons, we ourselves do not want to buy.”

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, both the US and Europe sanctioned semiconductor and telco equipment sales to Russia. Nvidia, Microsoft, Ericsson, Oracle, Cogent, and Sabre, have all ended business relationships with Russia.

Rostelecom operates data centers in Moscow, Novosibirsk, St. Petersburg, Udomlya, Yekaterinburg, Murmansk City, and China.

The company also has plans for another 55MW hyperscale data center in Moscow and has been rumored to be floating its data center unit later this year. Rostelecom subsidiary Rostelecom-Data Centre operates 21,000 racks across Russia.

Founded in 2014, local tech firm and data center solution provider Yadro creates storage offerings, processing systems, and telecom equipment.

The company is building a new development facility in Dubna, Russia, and says its engineers have worked for international companies, such as Microsoft and Intel. CEO Alexey Shelobkov previously worked at IBM, before joining Yadro in 2019.