UrBC, Moscow, August 9, 2018. An ad hoc team of experts at Russia’s Economic Development Ministry looked into the losses incurred by the national IT sector, ISPs, and mobile carriers after they had to comply with the recently adopted amendments to the counterterrorist legislation, Vedomosti reports.

It is estimated that companies will have to spend RUR 20m on average to store the data of 500,000 users. This means Yandex will have to spend RUR 3.6bn and Mail.Ru Group RUR 5.2bn all in all. The new law is expected to hit the smaller IT market players the hardest, as they have to comply with the same regulations (i.e. buy the same amount of costly equipment) as the larger companies.

The ministry believes the counterterrorist amendments might, in, fact, result in failure to comply with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decree on speeding up the country’s tech development through 2024. IT businesses will be unable to comply with both the President’s decree and the amendments package.

The amendments, developed by State Duma Deputy Irina Yarovaya and Senator Viktor Ozerov, came into effect on July 1, 2018. Among other things, the amendments make it obligatory for ISPs and carriers to store all the data relating to transfer/exchange/delivery/processing of voice messages, text messages, images, and audio and video materials for three years.