Kirill Dmitriev, Vladimir Putin's special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, said on 16 October that Russia and the US are discussing joint data centres powered by Russian nuclear plants, two days before a statutory ban on new US investment in Russia takes effect.
Dmitriev heads the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which the US Treasury has blocked since February 2022. He also said the Treasury had asked RDIF to help resolve payment problems in the Russian diesel arrangement Donald Trump announced on 9 October. The White House, the Treasury and the State Department had not publicly confirmed either claim by the evening of 16 October.
The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has authorised one new category of Russian trade since the Graham Act became law. General License 135, issued on 9 October, permits the sale, delivery, offloading and importation of Russian-origin diesel until 12:01 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on 7 April 2027. No published OFAC licence, Treasury statement or White House statement located for this report refers to data centres, Russian nuclear power or new investment in Russia.
The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, signed on 18 September, bars any new investment in Russia by US persons from 30 days after enactment and separately bars new US investment in Russia's energy sector. Section 115 of the Act lets the president waive its restrictions by certifying to Congress that a waiver serves the US national interest. No waiver or licence covering data centres or Russian power generation had been published by 16 October.
What Dmitriev announced
Dmitriev spoke at the eighth Russian Energy Week forum in Moscow, which ran from 14 to 16 October and is organised by the Roscongress Foundation. He said Russia and the US had found common ground in the Arctic, liquefied natural gas and other energy projects, and that data centres had come up in the same talks. TASS, the Russian state news agency, quoted him as saying the two sides had drawn up a clear list of projects that Russian companies are already working on. He named no project, company, site or timetable.
Reuters' English rendering of the remark referred to data centres using small-scale nuclear power plants, while the TASS version referred to Russian nuclear power plants without specifying their size. Putin told Sberbank's AI Journey conference in December 2025 that small nuclear plants could be built beside data centres and that Russia was ready to offer such packages to foreign partners, according to Nuclear Engineering International.
Dmitriev said further joint initiatives would be announced soon and presented the diesel arrangement as an example. "The ice has, in fact, begun to break," he told the conference, according to Reuters. He said Russia was carrying out projects with the US now and would keep doing so until the end of what the Russian government calls its "special military operation" in Ukraine.
Dmitriev said progress was difficult and the projects faced widespread resistance in the US and internationally. He told reporters that USians increasingly see sanctions as damaging the US and that US officials are looking for ways to lift them, according to Prime, a business outlet in the RIA Novosti group. He cited a one-month extension of relief on Russian oil sanctions and a six-month licence for Russian diesel.
Dmitriev said discussions on lifting sanctions were under way in the US and that so many overlapping layers of sanctions had been imposed that officials were confused about how to unwind them, according to Reuters. He described the Graham Act as misguided and said it "will harm all joint projects." He said Russia would watch how the law was applied.
Dmitriev said on 14 October that the first diesel contracts with US buyers would be signed within days and that Russian officials were in contact with the US side every hour. Boris Titov, another Putin envoy, told reporters at UN headquarters in New York in January 2026 that cheap Russian energy made the country a profitable place for US data centres and that restrictions on financial settlements were the main obstacle, according to a report of his TASS remarks.
The 18 October restrictions
Section 107 of the Graham Act prohibits new investment in Russia by a US person, wherever located, from 30 days after enactment, according to the Senate amendment text and summaries of the enacted law by Sullivan & Cromwell, Morgan Lewis and Debevoise & Plimpton. The 30th day after 18 September is 18 October. Debevoise & Plimpton gives 19 October for most of the Act's deadlines without explaining the difference.
Section 107 also bars the supply to anyone in Russia of service categories that the Treasury identifies, and bars US persons from approving, financing, facilitating or guaranteeing foreign transactions that would be prohibited if a US person carried them out. Morgan Lewis and Debevoise & Plimpton list the categories already identified by the Treasury as including architecture and engineering, management consulting and certain IT and cloud services. A US company that took an equity stake in, designed or ran cloud services for a data centre in Russia would fall within at least one of those prohibitions on the face of the text.
Section 108 separately bars new US investment in Russia's energy sector and the export of US-produced energy products to Russia. The Act does not define "energy sector", according to the Senate amendment text and King & Spalding. Debevoise & Plimpton says section 108 codifies Executive Orders 14066 and 14071. OFAC's guidance under those orders since 2022 defines the energy sector to include the generation and transmission of power "through any means, including nuclear", according to Skadden.
A data centre that only buys electricity from a Russian nuclear plant is a power consumer, which supports treating its owners' stake as a computing investment outside section 108. A project that builds or finances a dedicated nuclear plant beside the data centre, as Putin described in December 2025, would involve power generation and would fall within OFAC's existing definition. Neither OFAC nor any law firm reviewed has applied section 108 to a data-centre project.
Section 114(d) states that the Act's title does not apply to "activities carried out under an agreement for cooperation" made under section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, according to the Senate amendment text and Debevoise & Plimpton. Section 123 agreements govern the transfer of nuclear material, equipment and technology between the US and another country. The US-Russia section 123 agreement entered into force in January 2011. No source reviewed places the purchase of electricity by a commercial data centre within that agreement, and no US agency has said the exception could cover such a project.
Section 114(h) preserves general licences issued before enactment. General License 135, issued three weeks after enactment, relies instead on the Treasury's preserved power to issue new licences, according to Sullivan & Cromwell. OFAC's separate civil nuclear licence, General License 115D, covers qualifying projects initiated or under construction as of 21 November 2024, according to Debevoise & Plimpton. A data-centre project announced in October 2026 would not meet that date on the licence's terms as summarised.
The Act's bans apply to new investment. Debevoise & Plimpton and King & Spalding describe a 270-day period for non-Russian entities to wind down and divest, and neither firm identifies a clause protecting future investment under contracts signed before 18 October.
Section 111 requires blocking sanctions on Rosatom's senior leaders from a date set in the USEC Privatization Act, which Debevoise & Plimpton puts at 1 January 2028. Morgan Lewis and King & Spalding say the requirement also reaches Rosatom subsidiaries. Rosatom chief executive Alexei Likhachev and his deputies have been on the US Specially Designated Nationals list since early 2024, according to Interfax, and US sanctions also cover Rosatom subsidiaries including Rusatom Overseas, Atomflot and Rosatom Digital Solutions. Rosatom itself does not appear on any US list in the OpenSanctions record of the corporation.
The Treasury and RDIF
OFAC designated RDIF, its management company JSC RDIF and Dmitriev under Executive Order 14024 on 28 February 2022. The Treasury's release that day said RDIF was "widely considered a slush fund for President Vladimir Putin." US persons may not deal with a blocked entity without OFAC authorisation. The Treasury temporarily lifted Dmitriev's personal sanctions in April 2025 so the State Department could issue him a visa to meet Trump envoy Steve Witkoff in the US capital.
Dmitriev said on 16 October that the Treasury had approached RDIF to help with payment logistics and technical problems in the diesel arrangement, and that the fund would make sure payments reached their intended recipients, according to Reuters. He did not name any Treasury official or office, describe the payment problem or identify any bank. Reuters published no Treasury response. No Treasury statement confirming or denying the request could be found.
General License 135 authorises all transactions otherwise prohibited under the Russian Harmful Foreign Activities Sanctions Regulations and the Ukraine-/Russia-Related Sanctions Regulations that relate to the diesel trade, according to Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer and Clyde & Co. It bars any debit to accounts at US financial institutions held by the Central Bank of Russia, the National Wealth Fund or the Russian Ministry of Finance. It does not authorise transactions prohibited under other OFAC programmes. Neither firm addresses RDIF, and OFAC has not said publicly whether the licence covers a blocked fund acting as a payment intermediary.
RDIF's role in the diesel payments, if any, has not been documented. No fee, commission or contract involving the fund has been disclosed. A licence authorising trade in diesel is a commodity authorisation; it does not authorise new investment in Russia, which section 107 governs.
The diesel deal
Trump said on 9 October, after a call with Putin, that Russia would immediately release more than 300,000 tonnes of diesel to US and global markets, followed by 500,000 tonnes in November and a million tonnes after that. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said Russia was ready to supply 300,000 tonnes in October and could raise exports to 500,000 tonnes in November, according to TASS. The Russian government partially lifted its own diesel export ban from 10 October.
Reuters reported that the arrangement requires lifting some sanctions on Russian oil that Trump himself imposed and is meant to lower fuel prices before the 3 November midterm elections. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on 15 October that Russian diesel was reaching the US directly. No customs record or tanker-tracking report confirming a delivery to a US port had been published by 16 October.
The Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act of 2022 bans imports of Russian energy products, including diesel, and allows the ban to end only through a presidential certification on peace terms. Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer wrote that General License 135 does not address that statute. Clyde & Co wrote that the licence may face legal challenge. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Fox News that anyone in Congress who says either the 2022 law or the Graham Act prohibits the deal is wrong, according to Newsweek.
On 15 October the Treasury extended General License 128D, which allows Lukoil service stations outside Russia, including in the US, to keep operating until 24 April 2027. A separate licence, 130B, covers Lukoil's Bulgarian entities over the same period. Rosneft and Lukoil have been under US sanctions since late 2025.
The Trump administration has also exempted Hungary's Rosatom-built Paks II nuclear project from earlier US sanctions, according to the Polish Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW). Rosatom renegotiated the Paks II contracts in 2022 to operate under Western financial sanctions, according to OSW. Dmitriev called the diesel arrangement a possible model for wider economic cooperation, according to Daily Sabah.
Who could profit
Rosatom runs its data-centre business through Atomdata, part of the Rosenergoatom group that operates Russia's civilian nuclear plants. Rosenergoatom is a subsidiary of Atomenergoprom, the holding company for state nuclear corporation Rosatom. Any data centre buying power from a Russian nuclear plant would pay a Rosatom subsidiary for its electricity.
Atomdata's data centre beside the Kalinin nuclear plant at Udomlya in the Tver region opened in 2018 with 4,800 racks and 48 megawatts of capacity, according to Techinsider. The plant supplies it at about 3 roubles per kilowatt-hour, against 5 to 6 roubles in Moscow. Rosenergoatom first announced the site in 2015 with plans for up to 10,000 racks drawing about 80 megawatts, according to PCWorld, and Rosatom offered space to Google and Facebook at the time, according to Silicon UK.
Rosatom said in November 2025 that it operates five data centres with more than 93 megawatts of capacity and more than 6,500 racks. It plans modular data centres at the Novovoronezh, Balakovo and Smolensk nuclear plants. Atomdata bought the partly built 35-megawatt Moscow-2 facility in 2023 for 24 billion roubles, according to DCD.
Putin said in December 2025 that Russia planned to build 38 nuclear power units in under two decades, mainly in the Urals, Siberia and the Far East, and linked the build-out to expanding AI computing capacity. Putin also said in late December 2025 that the US side was interested in using electricity from the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant for cryptocurrency mining, according to Kommersant as reported by MEXC News.
Dmitriev runs both RDIF and the Russian side of the economic talks. No document published by 16 October gives RDIF a role in a data-centre project.
Dmitriev, TASS, Reuters and Russian outlets named no US company, investor, bank or technology supplier in the data-centre talks. No US company has announced participation. No ownership structure, financing plan, equipment supplier or revenue arrangement for any project has been made public.
Technology, energy and national security
The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) consolidated its Russia controls in 15 CFR 746.8 in June 2024. The rule removed computers incorporating certain integrated circuits from the licence exception for consumer devices and extended controls to enterprise software, including data-warehouse software, from 16 September 2024, according to Gibson Dunn. OFAC's prohibition on supplying IT, cloud and software services to anyone in Russia took effect on 12 September 2024. The Gibson Dunn summary does not address servers specifically, and BIS had published no licence or guidance referring to the proposed projects by 16 October.
Yandex's Chervonenkis supercomputer ranked 19th on the Top500 list in 2021 and later fell into the second hundred, a decline Meduza attributed to sanctions-related infrastructure difficulties. Sberbank's data centre under construction at Balakovo in the Saratov region is due to host Russia's largest supercomputer from 2027, according to a 2024 state media report cited by The Moscow Times.
Congressional resistance
Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Roger Wicker wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Bessent in early October that most of the Graham Act's provisions take effect on 18 October. They urged strict enforcement of the investment ban and clear Treasury guidance before the deadline. Graham, the South Carolina Republican who championed the bill, died in July 2026, and Trump delivered the eulogy at his funeral. The Senate passed the Act 86 to 11 and the House 262 to 159.
Seven senators from both parties issued a joint statement on 11 October saying the administration had neither consulted Congress nor submitted the explanation the 2022 import ban requires. Six Republican and six Democratic senators wrote to Trump on 13 October asking him to rescind General License 135 and use the Graham Act's authorities. They wrote that the deal "is a gift to our adversary and a betrayal of our Allies".
Democratic Representative Jim Costa of California and Republican Michael McCaul of Texas led a letter from 22 House members to Trump, Rubio and Bessent on 15 October urging the revocation of General License 135 and "full and faithful" implementation of the Graham Act. The letter asked which Russian officials, banks and state enterprises the administration would designate by 18 October and whether any provision would be delayed or waived. It also asked how General License 135 fits with the 2022 statutory ban on Russian energy imports.
Representative Gregory Meeks of New York introduced H.R. 10828 on 15 October to impose sanctions on Russian oil and gas extraction and refining, with 14 Democratic cosponsors and no published text. Republican Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania announced a bill to block all Russian oil purchases on 10 October, but it did not appear in congressional records by 16 October. The House is in recess until 9 November.
Republican Senator Thom Tillis said on NBC's Meet the Press that there was a legitimate case that Trump was not following the law. A White House official told Newsweek the administration "will comply with the act's requirements." White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said the diesel deal would add supply to the global market and bring prices down.
Ukraine and data infrastructure
Russian strikes have damaged or destroyed data centres belonging to at least eight companies in Ukraine since 23 September, according to Meduza. The Russian Defence Ministry claimed the facilities processed intelligence for Ukrainian forces. The owners of the Parkovyi data centre in Kyiv said on 1 October that a series of Russian attacks in September had caused critical damage, that restoration was impossible and that customer data had been moved to backup sites in the European Union. Parkovyi was reportedly Ukraine's only Uptime-certified Tier III data centre, according to DCD.
Ukrainian drones set fire to a Yandex data centre at Sasovo in Russia's Ryazan region on 8 October, halting its operations, according to Meduza. The site houses two of Yandex's three neural-network supercomputers, Lyapunov and Chervonenkis, and users reported outages at Yandex Cloud, Yandex Disk and other services. Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the strike and said Ukraine responds in kind to Russian attacks, according to Liga.net. Three consecutive Ukrainian strikes disabled about half of Yandex's data centres, according to The Moscow Times.
Ukrainian drones hit Sberbank's 122.2-billion-rouble data centre under construction at Balakovo overnight on 13 to 14 October, according to The Moscow Times. Sberbank first deputy chief executive Alexander Vedyakhin said banking systems and online services kept running normally. Balakovo is also home to the Balakovo nuclear plant, one of the three sites where Rosatom plans modular data centres.
What the administration has not answered
As of 16 October, neither the White House, the Treasury nor the State Department had confirmed Dmitriev’s claims that the US was discussing data-centre projects with Russia.
The Treasury has yet to say whether it approached RDIF for help with Russian diesel payments. OFAC has also left unanswered whether General License 135 permits transactions involving the sanctioned fund. Meanwhile, Dmitriev has named no US companies, investors, banks or technology suppliers involved in the proposed data-centre projects. There are no disclosed agreements, locations, construction plans or financing arrangements. Nor has the US government published any licence or waiver permitting new investment in Russian data centres or nuclear power generation.
The 22 House members asked the administration for written answers to their questions by 18 October, the day the investment ban takes effect.
