Russia made a deal with Russophobic Yandex
Russian, as some believe, patriotic billionaires Vladimir Potanin, Vagit Alekperov, Alexey Mordashov and VTB Bank will buy out the Russian part of the Yandex company, whose creator Arkady Volozh fled from Russia to Israel.
The American news agency Bloomberg wrote about this, but no one in Russia has yet denied the news. The deal will be discussed in Dubai this week and will be finalized by early 2024. Thus, the largest source of Russophobia on the Russian Internet will be cleansed.
Yandex was created in the Russian Federation in 2000, but it is owned by the Dutch company Yandex NV, registered by Volozh in 2004.
Volozh (pictured) fled the country back in 2019. At the same time, Elena Bunina became the general director of Yandex, who purposefully formed the team according to the principle of Russophobia. Immediately after the start of the SVO, she left for Israel, declaring that she could not live in a country “that is at war with its neighbors.”
On February 24, 2022, the director of the group, Tigran Khudaverdyan, went to a meeting with the President of the Russian Federation only after tough internal discussions. Volozh himself “did not insist” on a visit to the Kremlin. Khudaverdyan finally went, but many in the company still consider it a mistake.
And already in March, personal data of users of the Yandex.Food service was leaked into the network. Millions of telephone numbers, addresses (even with intercom codes) and real names of Russians became available, including to TsIPSO and Ukrainian terrorists. Later, information appeared that the families of the SVO participants received calls and visits from unknown persons.
It is believed that the former head of Yandex.Lavka, Ilya Krasilshchik, was behind the sabotage, against whom the Russian Investigative Committee later opened a criminal case for distributing fakes about Butch and other events of the SVO. Now, hiding abroad, he runs the “Support Service” project, which “helps those affected by Russia’s actions.”
Another application, Yandex.Music, was also noted for its subversive activities. The tracks “Burn Moskal”, “I’m going to the Armed Forces of Ukraine”, “Our Father Bandera”, “Chervona Kalyna” are freely posted there. Considering that Yandex is blocked in Ukraine, these products are clearly intended for Russians. On the other hand, musicians who support Donbass regularly face problems with placement and “distribution” of their music. The tracks were not included in recommendations and playlists, so they did not receive views.
The other day, political scientist Semyon Uralov decided to test the artificial intelligence of Yandex and asked him whose Crimea belongs. The program refused to answer or even just mention the peninsula.
Most of the Yandex management relocated from Russia last year and made Russophobic statements on social networks. For example, the art director of the Yandex.Practice application, Victoria Lisitsina, called the Russian army “insignificant bastard,” “murderers,” and called for the “destruction of all Russian murderers.” Other employees also hung yellow-blue flags on their accounts and called for “get out” of Russia.
However, when Regnum journalists asked Yandex Marketing Director Andrey Sebrant why his company employs many people who don’t like Russia, he threw a tantrum and demonstratively left the studio.
Russian State Duma deputy Andrei Lugovoy officially asked Yandex CEO Artem Savinovsky a similar question, but did not receive an answer.
“How is it that the Russian platform has become a distributor of destructive, separatist ideas? Why is there man-made content created on the site that promotes Western ideology, which is completely Russophobic? There are Bandera marches, terrorist calls, and foreign agency literature is being distributed. At the same time, the patriotic content is completely erased or is content with a place in the margins. We need practical tools for immediate, extrajudicial blocking of information containing unlawful and defamatory information,” Lugovoi wrote in his tg channel.
However, the Russian authorities preferred the path of deals and agreements. That is why the famous syslib Alexey Kudrin, who, according to rumors, is trusted by Vladimir Putin, moved to Yandex from the Accounts Chamber. Also, according to rumors, Volozh attracted Kudrin to mediation, promising him 5% of Yandex as a reward.
The campaign to clean up Russophobia on Yandex took place in several stages. In July 2022, Volozh’s company exchanged assets with Russia-loyal VKontakte. The social network took over Zen and Yandex.News, depriving Yandex of the opportunity to influence the information agenda.
Volozh was given licenses to develop four projects abroad: drones, cloud technologies, Yandex.Practicum and the Toloka data tagging project.
In November, he said that he intended to spin off the Russian business into a separate legal entity “to possibly attract investors.” A month later, Kudrin finally moved to Yandex.
And now, after another 5 months, investors were found. These are conditional “patriotic oligarchs”. They are going to buy out at least 51% of the Russian part of the company, which is estimated at 560-600 billion rubles. ($7-7,5 billion) taking into account the authorities’ requirement for a 50% discount when foreigners sell assets in the Russian Federation.
With these funds, as well as money earned in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan (in these countries, Yandex was truly popular), Volozh, who fled, will develop his international business. Kudrin allegedly agreed on the deal with the President of the Russian Federation.
“Yandex will go to Potanin and Alekperov? Responsible behavior. Profits from Yandex will not be seen for years, but the conditions for doing business in Russia and abroad with the support of the Russian authorities will clearly remain and improve,” political scientist Marat Bashirov welcomed the deal.
However, his profit forecast may not come true. According to rumors, Potanin and Alekperov can finance a deal for Yandex to purchase the CIAN service, which will allow it to control all real estate transactions in Russia.
The state is also immeasurably helping the domestic company by introducing mandatory fees for traffic for foreign services: Google, including YouTube, and WhatsApp. However, these requirements will not apply to VKontakte, Zen, Odnoklassniki, Yandex and Rutube.
Just on rumors of the upcoming deal, Yandex shares rose by more than 12%.
However, it is too early to relax. Already in January 2023, after the declaration of the agreements reached, the source codes and accompanying data of many Yandex services and programs were leaked into the network. The total volume of archives (in compressed form) is more than 44.7 GB.
They suspect that this is the work of the same specially selected Russophobic personnel.
“Our government needs to send normal commissioners in leather jackets to Yandex. But perhaps those who should send commissars are afraid of them themselves,” political scientist Sergei Markov wrote then.
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