Russian fuel, energy cos to undergo cyber defense exercises by 2035 - Energy Ministry

PERM. Aug 21 (Interfax) - Russia's Energy Ministry will conduct exercises with managed cyberattacks on fuel and energy facilities for 500 companies by 2035, the director of the ministry's digital transformation department, Felix Mitskevich said.

"We see and understand what is happening perfectly well, and also read the news. A cyberattack can cost very little in financial expenses, but the consequences can be in the multimillions, hundreds of millions even for a day's downtime of a huge enterprise," Mitskevich said at the Living Kama national water forum in Perm.

He said the ministry carried out a pilot project in Tatarstan last year. It selected several companies in the fuel and energy sector and carried out managed cyberattacks on their facilities, demonstrating vulnerabilities.

"Our goal is to conduct such exercises with 500 companies in the fuel and energy sector by 2035," Mitskevich said.

He said the ministry's objective is to synchronize the processes of digitalization and information security. "Digitalization is going up, information security is going down. It is fairly difficult to bring them parallel," Mitskevich said.

Several major Russian oil and gas companies were hit by cyberattacks in March 2025, but the Energy Ministry said they did not cause any serious damage.

Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev was reported as saying in a presentation that up to 80% of typical cyberattacks in the fuel and energy sector can be automatically neutralized using artificial intelligence, leaving the resources of experts free to handle only difficult problems.

The share of fuel and energy organizations using AI will increase to about 70% by the end of 2027 from 58% in 2024, according to the ministry. At state fuel and energy companies, the share of spending on domestic solutions in the area of software and hardware amounted to 90% and exceeded 190 billion rubles.