Yandex co-founder calls war ‘barbaric,’ signaling dismay in Russian elite
Volozh’s decision to openly condemn the war comes amid complex wrangling with the Kremlin over restructuring Yandex, known to many as Russia’s Google. Some Moscow business executives believe the government may seek a partial nationalization of the company as the environment becomes increasingly hostile for foreign investors.
His denunciation of the war, in which tens of thousands have died and cities have been leveled, sets Volozh apart from the rest of Russia’s wealthiest business executives. Many are privately critical but have made only guarded statements or have declined to comment on the conflict, fearful of retribution by Putin and his regime, especially when they have billions of dollars in assets in Russia at stake.
Volozh, 59, left Russia for Israel in 2014, but continued to run Yandex as its chief executive officer and serve on the company’s board. He resigned from both positions last year after the European Union imposed sanctions on him for “materially or financially supporting the invasion.”
He still owns an 8.5 percent stake in Yandex, which had traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange until being suspended as a result of the war.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threw the company into turmoil, tarnishing its previous image as a beacon for a new, more progressive, globally integrated Russia. Volozh said Thursday that it was clear that vision was over.
Thousands of Yandex employees have fled Russia since the start of the war and the company’s news aggregation business was accused by the E.U. of “promoting state media and narratives in its search results” and “removing content related to Russia’s war of aggression.” Yandex sold its news aggregation business soon after the sanctions were imposed.
“When we built Yandex, we were thinking not only of technology and business,” Volozh said. “We believed that we were building a new Russia.”
“But with time it has become clear that Russia is not rushing to become part of the global world, and at the same time the pressure on the company has grown,” he added. “Looking back, it is clear that some things could have been done differently.”
The only other major Russian businessman to publicly denounce the war is Oleg Tinkov, an exiled former owner of one of Russia’s biggest private banks. After he condemned Russia’s “crazy war” in Ukraine and renounced his Russian citizenship last year in protest, he said he was forced to sell his remaining minority stake to the Russian government for “kopecks.”
Tinkov’s public antiwar stance, however, appeared to help win him a reprieve from the British government, which last month said it was lifting sanctions on the tycoon after considering “all the factors in this case, including the actions Mr. Tinkov has taken following his sanctions designation.”
Following the decision, Tinkov said he hoped his example would encourage others and he told Russian independent news channel TV Rain that he “felt sorry” for other Russian billionaires who he said feared to speak out against the war because “they are cowards.”
Other Russian billionaires seeking the lifting of Western sanctions in U.K. courts, such as Mikhail Fridman, the founder of Alfa Group, have only made very limited comments against the war. In a letter sent to staff in the first days of the war, and later leaked to the media, Fridman said the war was “a tragedy” and called for an end to the bloodshed.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the exiled Russian tycoon and outspoken critic of the Putin regime, had supported Tinkov in his bid to win a reprieve from sanctions, citing his open condemnation of the war. He said on Thursday he hoped Tinkov’s case had inspired Volozh to take a stand.
But some Moscow business executives pointed to other potential motivating factors, including the growing appetite among state officials to seize assets and the increasing clouds over the future of Yandex.
The Dutch-domiciled company has been attempting to spin off its main businesses in Russia from its international businesses, and several Russian billionaires had expressed interest. But those talks have been foundering and in June a leading state banker, Andrei Kostin, who heads Russia’s second biggest bank, VTB, suggested that the government should take temporary control of Yandex’s assets. He criticized the proposed restructuring and said Yandex’s foreign investors were set to gain.
The Kremlin has taken an increasingly aggressive stance against foreign businesses. In July, it took control of the local branches of French yogurt producer Danone SA, and Carlsberg, the Danish brewer, deploying a decree targeting companies from “unfriendly” countries
Volozh “could not immediately speak against the war because he would have lost everything immediately. But now I think he understands very well that if the authorities want to take Yandex away from him they can do so,” said one Moscow businessman, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. The authorities have now “crossed the line from imitating legality to total lawlessness,” he added.
Volozh himself indicated in his statement that he had not been able to speak out previously because he had been helping the company’s employees “begin new lives” after they fled Russia. “There were many reasons which caused me to remain silent. You can argue about the timing of my statement, but not against its essence. I am against the war.”
He also admitted, however, that he “carried a share of the responsibility for the actions” of Russia, even though he had not lived there since 2014.
Volozh’s statement follows the imposition of sanctions by the United States last month on Alexei Kudrin, Russia’s former finance minister, who had once been seen as one of the more liberal members of the Putin regime and is now serving as an adviser to Yandex on the spinoff of its Russian and international assets.
Volozh had also attracted widespread ridicule last week after he appeared to try to distance himself from Russia’s war by publishing a new biography on his website which described him as a “Kazakhstan-born, Israeli tech entrepreneur.”
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