Sanctioned by the European Union, Yandex co-founder bids farewell
The co-founder of Russian tech gem Yandex, Arkadi Voloj, officially bid farewell to the group’s 20,000 employees on Friday, after his resignation in June in the wake of the first international sanctions linked to Ukraine.
“It’s time for me to write a farewell message. (…) As you know, I have not been leading Yandex Russia for a long time, and this year I had to leave all [mes] positions » within the management, he wrote in an internal message to the company, confirmed to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
At the beginning of June, he resigned from the management of Yandex, the main search engine in Russia which he had co-founded in 1997, after being individually sanctioned by the European Union (EU) in connection with Ukraine. “Yandex is the project of my life, but not only mine. For thirty years, we have done this together from scratch, in the context of global competition”recalled 58-year-old Arkadi Voloj.
He also judged “completely reasonable and necessary” company restructuring plan “under current conditions”. In early December, a close friend of Vladimir Putin, Alexei Kudrin, said he joined Yandex as “development consultant” of the company, a few days after the announcement by the management of a reorganization of the group.
In fact, the company will now be divided into two entities, one managing activities in Russia, the other those abroad. Yandex is Russia’s leading search engine, but is also a dominant player in taxi and delivery services in much of the Russian-speaking world.
The Russian digital sector has been strongly affected by Western sanctions against Moscow. The Kremlin has since sought to replace the products of Western giants that have left the country, while strengthening its grip on this strategic sector.