Will the EU ban providing cloud services to Russia?

The EU is considering a ban on providing cloud computing services to Russia as part of a new round of sanctions, an EU official told Reuters.

Although the EU announced in a public press release that the sixth sanctions package would include a restriction on the provision of cloud services, cloud technologies were not included in the final decision. As later explained by the press officer for the EU Council, the reference to the ban on cloud services in the first statement was ‘a fabric error’.

The cloud service restriction was not recommended by the European Commission, according to an EU official familiar with sanctions decisions. Nonetheless, such a prospect was not ruled out.