Data-Residency

The geopatriation trend - moving from US hyperscalers to local cloud providers for sovereignty, security, and control.

Russia’s data localization law, effective September 2015, requires personal data of Russian citizens to be stored within Russia. The primary database must be on Russian territory; copies may exist abroad, but the original recording and storage must occur domestically. This has forced international companies to establish Russian infrastructure or exit the market. LinkedIn was blocked in 2016 for non-compliance. The law serves multiple purposes: enabling domestic surveillance (data is accessible to SORM), reducing dependence on foreign services, and building domestic cloud industry. Combined with SORM backdoor requirements and Yarovaya retention mandates, data localization ensures Russian authorities have access to personal data of Russian citizens regardless of what foreign service they use—if the service operates in Russia, the data must be stored there.