Two new data centers are set to be developed in St. Petersburg, Russia.The Investment Committee of St. Petersburg this month announced two data centers will be built in the Moskovsky and Vyborgsky districts of St. Petersburg.Two agreements of intent were signed at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum event this month between Nikolai Linchenko, the vice governor of St. Petersburg, and Dmitry Sharov, managing director of the companies, Data Center Perspektiva and Data Center Spb (ЦОД Перспектива and ЦОД Спб).Full details of the planned facilities were not shared in the announcement, but local press report they will offer 22MW between them – including 15MW for the Vyborgsky site, which could go live in early 2028.The facilities will reportedly offer high-quality IT infrastructure for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as large industry and cross-industry companies.“The project aims to improve the quality of cloud storage services, create additional opportunities for attracting investment in business development, increase the economic efficiency of companies and sales volumes, and increase tax revenues,” the investment committee said.Dmitry Sharov leads Data Center Expert, a data center design and construction firm founded in 2006. According to its website, the company has been involved in multiple projects for Russian colo firm Datahouse (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Yekaterinburg/Ekaterinburg) as well as others, including SafeHarbor (Moscow).Russian data center market strugglesThe new St. Petersburg facilities come amid a growing pause on new data center developments in Russia.Forbes Russia – using data from TechExpo and the Russian Federal Property Management Agency (PKR) – reports some 38 data center construction projects in the country have been paused in the last three years, totaling some 128.6 billion ($2.2bn) rubles in value.A total of 128 data center projects, representing around 1 trillion rubles ($13.28bn), have been announced in that time, suggesting around nearly a third of projects have stalled. This is despite Russian – and Moscow specifically – having very little available vacant data center capacity available to customers.Around 42 projects are reportedly under construction, including facilities from companies including Yandex, Sber, DataPro, AFK Sistema, Monarch Group, Goznak, VKontakte, and others.Forbes said the projects – many funded through debt and private investment – are vulnerable to the high cost of capital, rising construction and utility costs, and difficulties with equipment supplies and connecting to power grids.The likes of Alcon, Wildberries, and Rosenergoatom are companies that have seen projects stalled."The data center market is currently undergoing a selection phase," says Daniil Novitsky, CEO of PKR. "Demand for computing power is growing, especially against the backdrop of the development of cloud services and AI. For commercial projects, the cost of financing, access to energy, and the ability to scale the facility without placing an excessive burden on the project's economics are decisive.""A crisis is always a time to freeze projects and buy up idle assets for next to nothing," added Filipp Vratskikh, CEO of TechExpo. He told Forbes many firms are now "rushing to quickly get rid of" projects they've already started to recoup on potential losses.C.News reported earlier this year that grid operators around Moscow have told data center developers there is no available grid capacity for new data centers until at least 2028, if not later.New available data center capacity going live in Russia has slowed significantly in the last couple of years, as has the number of new projects in development.IXcellerate secures MT Cloud as a customerRussian data center firm IXcellerate has secured a new cloud customer.The firm recently announced MT Cloud, the cloud provider operated by Movetel, has scaled up its server capacity and deployed new clusters across IXcellerate data centers.MT Cloud has been a customer of IXcellerate for “several years,” according to the companies, with deployed racks generally in the 10-12kW range at IXcellerate’s Moscow North and South campuses.“For us, as a specialized cloud provider, infrastructure underpins the complex architectural setups we work with. Our projects rely on hybrid and distributed models where resilience, steady performance under high load, and the ability to scale without a rebuild are critical,” said Timur Chubarin, CEO of MT Cloud. “Adding a second independent IXcellerate site lets us run backup scenarios, balance mission-critical workloads, and maintain overall platform reliability.”Founded in 2011 by Guy Willner, IXcellerate first launched its facility at the Moscow North campus around 2013. Today, IXcellerate has five operating data centers across two campuses. The firm acquired land for a third Moscow campus last year: the 130MW site could launch in 2027.Andrei Aksenov, CEO of IXcellerate, added: “All IXcellerate data centers are designed as standalone facilities, enabling customers to build geo-distributed and fully redundant IT systems. This is particularly important for cloud providers working with high-load services and mission-critical applications. We support their digital growth and remove the infrastructure constraints that could hold them back.”IXcellerate also recently announced Russian IT company ATOL has migrated its infrastructure to an IXcellerate facility.ATOL has deployed racks at IXcellerate’s MOS5 data center at the Moscow South campus, and reserved additional capacity for future expansion.