Amazon announced on Tuesday, March 8, a series of limitations aimed at Russia and Belarus and which concern all of its services. “We have suspended product shipments to customers in Russia and Belarus, and we will no longer accept new customers in these countries for our Amazon Web Services [AWS] or new third-party resellers. We are also suspending access to Amazon Prime Video in Russia”writes the company in a press release.
Amazon is much less present in Russia than in the European Union – it does not have a site in Russia but delivered products ordered on its other sites to the country. Russian consumers use more massively local competitors, Wildberries or Ozon; high import taxes make Amazon products uncompetitive in Russia.
Few customers
AWS, whose services are used by many companies of all sizes around the world, also has a limited presence in Russia and Belarus. “We have no data center, infrastructure or office in Russia. Our policy has long been not to work with the Russian government., writes Amazon. The company says its main customers in Russia are local subsidiaries of international groups.
On March 5, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov asked Amazon to “suspend access to AWS services” in Russia, for “supporting a global movement of governments and big business” opposed to the invasion of Ukraine.
Two major companies providing connectivity to Internet backbones, Lucent and Cogent, have also announced the suspension of their services in Russia. Lucent has only one very limited number of customers in the country ; on the other hand, Cogent is an important partner of several Russian Internet service providers, dont Rostelecom.
Corrigendum on March 9 at 2:30 p.m.: correction of the importance of Cogent in Russia.