Sitronics, a Russian telecom equipment maker, is reportedly investing $2.7m in R&D and manufacture of its proprietary servers that would use Intel chips.

A spokesman for Sitronics was quoted as saying foreign chips have been chosen because Russian ones “do not meet technical requirements yet.”

The investor has plans to set up production on the premises of Element, an asset of Rostec, the government-owned umbrella company for technology development, and AFK Sistema, a large domestic private company. An inaugural production run is scheduled for the first six months of this year, followed, hopefully, by serial production on an as-ordered basis. Sitronics believes its future servers will be in demand across Russia’s telecom sector and government customers.

That said, Sitronics servers are unlikely to meet new government criteria for being registered as a fully Russian product to enjoy preferences at prospective government procurement procedures—because foreign architecture will be used. So, it is expected that in the Russian market, the new servers will have to compete on an equal footing with international companies.