Despite the best efforts of the United States, Russia's stock of servers and computer storage has reportedly returned to heights it had not reached since before sanctions were leveled in February of 2022. Heavy sanctions on Russia's ability to access almost anything with a computer chip were leveled by the United States in 2022 in response to Russia's antagonism of Ukraine.
Russian news site CNews reported on the exact hardware numbers entering Russia on Wednesday. The flow of solid state drives entering the state has increased fivefold since 2022, up to 148,000 units in 2023. 126,000 foreign-based server units also entered the country, up 1% from pre-sanction 2021.
The lion's share of this influx likely came with help from Chinese distributors, whose willingness to send anything into Russia has contributed 89% of the processors used in the country today. While the report generally tracks with other sources that have indicated newly improved supply lines from China to Russia, as with all reports from Russia news sources, we should take the analysis with some salt given potential patriotic or government influences.
