Russia: Ministry of Digital Development opened consultation on draft Law on Fundamentals of State Regulation of the Fields of Application of Artificial Intelligence Technologies including data localisation requirement

On 18 March 2026, the Ministry of Digital Development opened a public consultation on the draft Law on Fundamentals of State Regulation of the Fields of Application of Artificial Intelligence Technologies until 15 April 2026. The draft would require that all stages of the development and training of sovereign and national artificial intelligence models be carried out on the territory of the Russian Federation by citizens of the Russian Federation and Russian legal entities. Training of such models using datasets would also be required to be carried out on the territory of the Russian Federation. Trusted artificial intelligence models would be required to ensure that data is processed exclusively on the territory of the Russian Federation. The draft further provides that the functioning of cross-border artificial intelligence technologies may be prohibited or restricted in cases established by the legislation of the Russian Federation.