Despite sanctions Russian Yandex online services still accessible in Ukraine
Services Yandex.Maps, Yandex.Taxi and Yandex.Traffic are accessible again in Ukraine through different internet service providers, as reported by Strana.ua news website citing internet users as well as Olexandr Fedienko, the Chairman of the Management Board of the Internet Association of Ukraine.
“Access has been available for two days. But this is not because operators stopped blocking it. This is rather due to Yandex services moving to other cloud network and being hosted there now. Now providers must constantly monitor the situation, look which IP address they have and ban them each time. But Yandex can change this dynamic address at least every hour. We will end up banning all IP-addresses in Europe in one year. It would be easier to cut off the internet for the whole country. These catch-ups exist all over the world for all those who approach this work in a non-systematic way. Systematically, this cannot be 100% blocked but we would need to purchase expensive equipment to become more or less effective [at countering it],” Fedienko said.
The Chairman of the Internet Association fears that law enforcement bodies can use the situation to exert pressure on telecom operators.
“The main issue is to prevent the law enforcement bodies to use this as a method of pressure on telecom operators. The providers fulfilled what they were ordered. It worked at that moment. But Yandex has taken counter-actions and I don’t know what to do to ban it now,” Fedienko stressed.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree imposing sanctions against Russia. According to the decree, Ukrainian Internet providers must ban access to Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki social networks and also Yandex and Mail.ru services.