Putin to Meet Officials on Cybersecurity as Kremlin Cites Rising Risks

Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to meet senior government, security and financial officials on Wednesday, October 14, 2026, on cybersecurity, which the Kremlin calls an increasingly urgent concern. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said artificial intelligence technologies bring many benefits and advantages, boosting efficiency, but attempts by various states to weaponize these new technologies pose threats to entire sectors of any country's economy. "Naturally, we are no exception, and we must be prepared for these challenges. That is why the president is holding this meeting today," he said. He denied a link to recent strikes: "No, this is a much more systemic meeting. It is not connected to those specific, isolated attacks." Participants include government ministers, top security officials, the head of Sberbank, and Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina. ua.news also lists Sergey Kirienko and Sergey Shoigu among those attending. In the past week, drone strikes hit four Russian data centres—three belonging to Yandex and one to Sberbank. An attack caused a fire and shutdown at Yandex's Sasovo center in the Ryazan region, which holds tens of thousands of servers. Vedyakhin confirmed the Saratov strike on Sberbank, with services reported still functioning normally. Neither Yandex nor Sberbank confirmed whether supercomputers were damaged.