Komi’s 15 Crypto Mining Centers Ran Into Power and Law

Komi’s 2024 plan for 15 crypto mining centers still has not produced a working site, two years after land was allocated in Mikun and Sindor. Vladimir Uyba, then head of the Komi Republic, sold the build as an IT bet with tax income attached. The first two yards were costed at 2.5 billion rubles ($27.6 million), and the power firm in the deal talked about a much larger cheque.

The legal door did open. The hashing never followed on those plots. A later gas-fired cluster is what actually poured concrete, while Moscow shut mining down through 2032.

The 15-Center Promise in Komi

Uyba announced the 15 sites in September 2024, days after President Vladimir Putin signed the law that put industrial mining on the books. The first two were mapped to Mikun in the Ust-Vymsky District and Sindor in the Knyazhpogostsky District. Land, he said, was already allocated. The partner named in the regional deal was UK Energoresurs-K.

The project will help us develop the IT industry and digital technologies. It is committed for the long term. It is ready to invest about 35 billion rubles in the project.

Vladimir Uyba, Head of the Komi Republic, September 2024

That 35 billion rubles (~$386.2 million) was a longer pledge, not the 2.5 billion ruble ticket on the first two sheds. Komi’s pitch was cheap northern power, a long winter for cooling, and idle industrial land. BitRiver, then Russia’s largest mining host, had already toured the republic in 2023 with a separate Komi data-center plan that slipped from a 2024 start to 2026 and then went quiet.

THE TWO-YEAR PAPER TRAIL

1. August 8, 2024: Putin signs the 2024 federal mining statute, which defines mining, creates tax-service registers, and lets the government ban hashing in named regions.
2. September 2024: Komi signs with Energoresurs-K for Mikun and Sindor and publicly floats 15 centers.
3. November 1, 2024: Miner and infrastructure-operator registers start. Unregistered individuals may mine only inside a monthly power cap of 6,000 kWh.
4. December 23, 2024: Government Resolution 1869 starts the regional ban list that later swallows whole power systems.
5. January 2025: Komi shifts the first promised geography toward Inta, Usinsk, and Vorkuta.
6. April 2025: Anton Vinogradov, the vice-premier who had been selling the data-center map, is detained in Moscow.
7. June 2025: A Komi government press account says none of the announced data-center projects have been built. A separate 114 MW gas deal is signed at the St. Petersburg forum.
8. November 2025: Pile-driving starts on that 114 MW cluster at the Zelenets industrial park.
9. August 15, 2026: Mining is banned in Moscow, the Moscow Region, and named parts of Kursk through December 31, 2032.

The Kremlin note on mining rules was explicit about the trade. Legal hashing came with a switch the cabinet could throw wherever the grid was tight. Komi used the legalization headline. The switch is what has mattered since.

What Happened to the Mikun and Sindor Sites?

Mikun and Sindor were supposed to be the easy first pair. In October 2024, Anton Vinogradov, then a deputy premier, told the regional legislature the two sites would start in 2025. He added a second wave of five centers in Vorkuta, Inta, Usinsk, and Pechora, costed at 10 billion rubles, with 50 jobs. Design work and power tariffs were for 2025. Handover was for 2026. He did not say where the remaining sites on the 15-count would go.

By January 2025 the map had already moved. Officials who had named Pechora, Mikun, and Sindor as the opening set were pointing instead at Inta, Usinsk, and Vorkuta. On June 18, 2025, a regional recap of the whole file stated the blunt fact: none of the announced projects had been realized.

THE ORIGINAL MAP AND WHAT FOLLOWED

• Mikun and Sindor: Named in September 2024 as the first two of 15, with land allocated and a 2.5 billion ruble ticket; they did not start hashing.
• Vorkuta, Inta, Usinsk, Pechora: Listed in October 2024 as a 10 billion ruble second stage aimed at 2026 handover, then partly reshuffled in January 2025.
• Forest plots: Prosecutors later said 2024-2025 leases were issued as linear objects without tenders for data-center work that is not a linear object; those forest centers were not built after April 2025, and an arbitration court later voided the leases.
• Zelenets, Syktyvdinsky District: A different 114 MW gas-fired cluster, signed at the 2025 St. Petersburg forum, is the project that actually broke ground.

Feb 2026 comments from regional officials still talked about two of the 15 being under construction and a first switch-on by the end of 2026. That timetable has not been matched by an independent confirmation that any of the original 15 is hashing.

The Vice-Premier Who Pitched the Deal Faces Trial

Vinogradov arrived in Komi in May 2023 as a deputy premier and became first deputy on August 1, 2024. He was the public face of the data-center file. On October 10, 2024, he listed the centers among the republic’s coming investment projects. He left office in January 2025. Investigators detained him in Moscow on April 4, 2025, and a court ordered him held three days later.

The Investigative Committee opened a case under part 6 of Article 290 of the criminal code, taking a bribe in an especially large amount, on FSB materials. Prosecutors later added a large-scale fraud count. They say he oversaw a data-center program valued on the 35 billion ruble pledge, and that the general director of Energoresurs-K paid him for patronage on the contract. They also say the natural-resources ministry leased forest land to firms as if the build were a linear utility, which let the deals skip tenders.

He has not been convicted. The file reached Syktyvkar’s city court in 2026, and prosecutors read the charges on August 19, 2026. After he was jailed in April 2025, the forest data centers were not built. The original Mikun-Sindor pairing sat in the same stall.

That is the part the 2024 launch copy could not see. The 15-center map was tied to one official’s deal flow. When that official left in handcuffs, the map did not survive as drawn.

A 114 MW Gas Cluster Replaced the Original Map

The build that did start is not Energoresurs-K’s Mikun pair. At the 2025 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Komi premier Dmitry Bratynenko signed with Integrator Komi and UK Megapolis-Invest for a 114 MW mining cluster in the Syktyvdinsky District. The site is the Zelenets industrial park. The power is not a grid tap. Gas engines on the pad are meant to burn local fuel and feed the racks directly.

Park owner Artem Dragunov said in November 2025 that piles were in for the dispatch building, trial piles had cleared the gas-engine pads, and Gazprom had issued three connection terms, for 1,500, 5,000, and 30,000 cubic meters an hour. Of that, 6,500 cubic meters an hour was due in the first quarter of 2026. He put the first stage at 23.4 MW in that same quarter and described the yard as independent energy blocks, so a tenant could grow without waiting on the wires.

COD114 AS PITCHED

• Nameplate: 114 MW modular mining hall with on-site gas engines, not a utility feed.
• First stage: 23.4 MW was scheduled for the first quarter of 2026; no independent confirmation it has begun hashing.
• Gas ticket: Three Gazprom terms totaling a path up to 30,000 cubic meters an hour, with 6,500 cubic meters an hour planned for early 2026.
• Park calendar: Dragunov said in May 2026 that Zelenets itself was due to open on September 1, 2026, after a slip from a late-2024 target.

A hosting operator now advertises a gas-fired mining site in Komi among yards it has under construction. That listing tracks the same northward, off-grid idea. It is still a construction story, not a hashrate print.

The local irony is smaller and uglier. In the same Zelenets area, a 39-year-old ran 88 ASIC machines from August 2025 to February 2026 on a stolen grid tap. Investigators put the theft at 3.4 million kWh, almost 6 million rubles of damage to the supplier. He was not on the miner register. He repaid 2 million rubles; gear and a plot worth about 4 million rubles were frozen. The legal cluster was still pouring pads. The illegal farm was already pulling power.

Moscow’s Grid Lost the Mining Argument

Legalization in 2024 did not mean hashing could sit on every Russian feeder. Resolution 1869 of December 23, 2024, used the new statute to close whole regions. The North Caucasus republics and several occupied Ukrainian territories went dark for miners from January 1, 2025, through March 15, 2031. Parts of Irkutsk followed. Buryatia and Zabaykalsky Krai moved from winter-only pauses to longer shutdowns.

The cabinet then aimed at the capital. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed Resolution 936 on July 25, 2026. It was posted on July 31. The July 2026 Moscow mining ban took effect on August 15, 2026, and runs through December 31, 2032. It covers mining and mining-pool participation in Moscow, the entire Moscow Region, eight Kursk districts, and the city of Lgov.

Moscow Region energy minister Sergei Voropanov had put mining load on that system at about 1 GW. Secondary tallies circulating with the decree put 65 data centers in the city and region at 734 MW, with a path to 3.6 GW by 2032, about 17% of peak demand if left unchecked. Officials said the economic return did not cover the grid risk. Miners can move kits, switch off, or face fines. They cannot keep pulling that feeder.

WHERE RUSSIA HAS BANNED MINING

Komi is absent from that list, which is the whole northern pitch. A region that still has spare gas and a weak industrial load can take machines a banned city cannot keep. Domestic crypto payments remain tightly limited, and a full domestic exchange regime is still a fight. Mining is the slice the state chose to license, then to fence.

Russia Still Holds 17.2% of Bitcoin Hashrate

The bans have not knocked Russia off the board. Luxor’s Hashrate Index, in its Q3 2026 heatmap dated July 16, 2026, put the country second globally with 17.2% of global Bitcoin hashrate, or about 162 EH/s. The United States led at 36.7% (about 345 EH/s). China was third at 12.2% (about 115 EH/s). Those three still held about 66% of the network.

TOP SHARES, Q3 2026

The network’s 30-day average sat near 940 EH/s in that print, down 6.3% from about 1,004 EH/s in Q2 and about 12% below a December 2025 peak near 1,066 EH/s. Russia’s own machines fell from about 170 EH/s to 162 EH/s, an 8 EH/s drop of about 5%. Share still rose because other countries cut more. That heatmap closed before the August 15 Moscow cutoff, so it does not measure how much of the 1 GW capital load later went dark or rolled north.

BitRiver, the host that once talked up a Komi yard of its own, entered bankruptcy proceedings in February 2026. Founder Igor Runets was later moved from house arrest to pretrial detention on a separate fraud file. The national champion’s mess did not zero the country’s hash. It did show how fast a sanctioned, grid-tied Siberian model can break when the state starts closing feeders.

Why Hash Keeps Moving Toward Stranded Gas

A banned watt in Moscow is not a dead watt. Mining load follows the cheapest power that will still have it, and Russia’s remaining invitation is stranded fuel: Siberian hydro where it is still allowed, and northern gas that never had a city attached. Komi’s 114 MW design is that invitation in steel. Generate on the pad, skip the public feeder, stay off the ban list that is written for grid stress.

That is also why a man in Zelenets stole 3.4 million kWh while the legal cluster was still a pile field. The republic advertised itself as the next hotspot. The legal path was slow, political, and then criminal. The illegal path was a barn and a bypassed meter. The 2024 statute was supposed to drag that work onto a register. In Komi it produced a trial, a shuffled map, and one gas project that has not yet proven its first 23.4 MW.

Uyba’s 15 centers remain a press release from September 2024. Mikun and Sindor never became the opening pair they were named to be. The vice-premier who walked the file into the legislature is in the dock. Moscow’s ban is in force through December 31, 2032. Russia still hashes at 162 EH/s on the last full country map published before that ban. The open question in Komi is narrower, and still unanswered: when, if ever, those gas engines at Zelenets turn a licensed watt into a live share of that 162.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of public mining projects, court filings, and government decrees. It is informational only and is not investment, legal, or tax advice, and it is not a recommendation to mine, buy, sell, or hold bitcoin or any other digital asset. Readers considering mining hardware, hosting contracts, or crypto exposure should consult a licensed financial adviser and, where a project sits in Russia, a lawyer admitted in that jurisdiction. Figures, case statuses, and plant calendars reflect the cited decrees, company statements, and Hashrate Index print as used here and can change as courts rule and sites come online or go dark.