Due to sanctions and import problems, Russian companies have faced a shortage of modern equipment and software. Spending on purchasing IT services abroad rose by almost a third in the second quarter of 2026 alone.
This was reported by Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service.
According to the intelligence service, because of the war against Ukraine and international isolation, Russian business has become technologically dependent on foreign developments. The country lacks modern equipment and fully fledged equivalents to Western software.
To keep their systems running, Russian companies are forced to spend substantial sums on foreign IT services. In the second quarter of 2026, such spending rose by almost a third, to 75 billion roubles.
One of the main problems has been a shortage of physical hardware due to the blocking of parallel import channels. Whereas Russia previously tried to bring in servers and high-performance graphics accelerators through обходні schemes, such deliveries have now virtually stopped. Instead of thousands of units of equipment, only isolated examples are making it into the country.
Because of a lack of domestic computing capacity for working with artificial intelligence and supporting databases, Russian business is forced to rent resources from foreign cloud services.
The situation with software remains no less difficult. Russian developments cannot fully replace Western enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, industrial automation software, and complex engineering solutions.
By the intelligence service’s assessment, Russia lacks the resources, time, and specialists to create fully fledged equivalents. As a result, companies continue to buy foreign licences semi-legally and use overseas neural networks via intermediaries in third countries, overpaying for such services.
The intelligence service notes that Russia’s technological lag behind developed countries continues to deepen. Dependence on foreign infrastructure and the Kremlin’s plans to further restrict incoming internet traffic could isolate the country even more from global technological progress.