Comment by threeseed
2 years ago
This is likely related to the US imposing secondary sanctions early this year.
Yandex would lose access to their US/EU bank accounts if they were still operating in Russia.
2 years ago
This is likely related to the US imposing secondary sanctions early this year.
Yandex would lose access to their US/EU bank accounts if they were still operating in Russia.
Not just that. Russia is going to confiscate all Western assets in Russia as a counter measure. Valued roughly at 200B USD, mainly owned by EU countries.
Yandex would lose their Russian business in any case.
Yandex is keeping their Russian business.
This is Yandex's European arm divesting itself from the Search+Mail business they have in Russia.
In the press release, this was even mentioned - that Yandex's Russian management (aka most of it's management) would be buying out their Russian operations.
Slight edit to this. I didn't realize the core founding team was pushed out and largely committed Aliyah for Israel after the 2022 War began.
Not surprised either, as the core team was fairly progressive and anti-war, as a lot of Russian techies are. Also, it was the core team that was working on forward facing bets - sort of like a more functional version of Larry Page and Sergey Brin - and they're keeping those forward facing bets.
Middle management appears to still be operating in Russia though.
Edit:
To people commenting below,
IT Professionals and most other white collar jobs are draft exempted in Russia [0]
To make up for the unfairness, mobilized Russian soldiers are being paid Russian/Eastern European white collar level salaries ($2,500/mo) [1]
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-excludes-some-it...
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/opinion/russia-ukraine-wa...
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I think there is little hope of normalizing relations with Russia, so unfortunately these "Western assets" need to be written off anyway. A large part of them ($98bn) came from Cyprus which might just be round-tripping Russian money.
All wars have something in common: they end. That thought in your head about lack of hope of normalizing relations is just the current propaganda working.
Edit: it's amazing just how short-sighted people can be. Look, we still bring up the Nazis as an unassailable argument for how something is bad. And yet the war with Germany ended and they are now a US ally fighting Russia. I'm sure in the midst of WW2 the common folk also believed that there can be no peace with Germany, after all the man on the radio said so.
Besides, during WW2 the situation was the opposite: Russia was an ally. And hey, if you study European history at all you'll note that it's a series of wars with shifting alliances.
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> I think there is little hope of normalizing relations with Russia
After 9/11, the US maintained productive relations with the Saudis. They're actively supporting Israel through the Gaza business. They have a long history of propping up dictators and thrashing countries for hard-to-articulate reasons (I still don't get exactly what the point of Afghanistan or Iraq was, even accepting the blunt "oil" that is sometimes given out).
I don't see why relations with Russia aren't normalised now. As can be seen in this very announcement (suddenly international deals are being handled in Yuan), the US appears hell-bent on taking Russia and China then welding them together. That seems wildly stupid to me and personally I think it is a serious foreign policy blunder. The US should have sought a quick peace in Ukraine and normalised relations immediately.
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That is a threat if the West confiscates Russian assets that have been frozen, Russia will retaliate in kind. https://www.rt.com/russia/591905-russia-asset-seizure-warnin...
Yeah GP comment is missing context for many readers that Western leaders are contemplating stealing hundreds of billions of dollars of Russia’s money.
With that is goodbye to any chance of wider Europe investing in Russia for the next century.
I hope India takes notice because so far they seemed to have cared little about the blood on their hands.
I was also not very happy about India buying from Russia in the first place, but I've come around and see it as okay for two reasons:
- Russia still gets far less than they got from the European countries, because no one else is willing to take it, and Europe still gets part of the resources we need
- The money Russia gets is basically useless, cause so much Rupees are not freely convertible. They sit on a big stash of money that they cannot use to buy the things they need (cause they'd need Dollars or Euros for that)
I don't think the second part was intentional on Indias part (I believe them when they say they don't care about Europe - which is something we should remember in all future interactions. Fair trade? Yes. Favors for 'friends'? Not one), but it seems to work out well.
> I hope India takes notice because so far they seemed to have cared little about the blood on their hands.
If there's a buyer, there's a seller [0]. EU member states need oil, so they buy it via India.
There's no alternative to Russian crude for the European market.
Anyhow, the last time Indian listened to Western oil sanctions over Iran in the 2008-10 period [1], the Indian economy ground to a halt and had a lost decade [2] while China grew with double digits in the same period, powered by Iranian crude.
Oh, and Iran still exists in 2024 and can project even more power than it ever could in 2014.
Given this context, India ain't dropping this competitive advantage.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/fuels-russian-oil-ge...
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/world/asia/31india.html
[2] - https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/cid/...
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