Yandex decided to close its offices in Ukraine
Yandex has decided to close its offices in Kyiv and Odessa because of the sanctions imposed by Ukraine, as reported by Interfax.
"Yandex.is included on the sanctions list and in fact is unable to conduct business in Ukraine. In particular, all accounts of the company are frozen so we cannot pay salaries to our employees. Therefore we decided to close offices in Kyiv and Odessa," the representative of the company, Ochir Mandzhikov said. He noted that the staff will be offered positions in other Yandex offices in different countries.
A similar decision was also made by VKontakte and Mail.ru.
It was reported that on May 29th, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) carried out searches of the Kyiv and Odessa offices of the Yandex.Ukraine. The SBU suspects the management of the company of transferring personal data of Ukrainian citizens to the Russian special services.
On May 16th, President Petro Poroshenko signed an order putting into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council, according to which the list of individuals and legal entities of the Russian Federation, against whom sanctions were introduced, was expanded. The expanded list includes 1,228 individuals and 468 legal entities. In particular, access to social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki has been blocked in Ukraine, as well as access to Mail.ru and Yandex.
Poroshenko said that Ukraine will cancel the sanctions after the cessation of Russian aggression.