Following completion of the sale transaction, YNV will retain a portfolio of international businesses and other non-Russian assets, including four early-stage technology businesses and other assets:
* Nebius AI, an AI cloud platform that is one of the largest providers of GPU capacity in Europe;
* Toloka AI, a data solutions partner for GenAI and Large Language Model development;
* Avride, one of the leading developers of self-driving technologies;
* TripleTen, an EdTech service that equips people with in-demand tech skills;
* our data center located in Finland; and
* minority investments in other technology businesses.
From what I understand, this means basically that they are selling search and associated services that are mostly popular in Russia to some Russian consortium. Bringing Yandex under complete Russian control, without influence from western shareholders.
Those western shareholders (YNV) get a bunch of money and the above AI related subsidaries located outside of Russia.
Weird accounting tricks in Russia include "the new nobility" making you offers that you cannot refuse. This is a country in which the FSB (equivalent of the FBI) is running their own protection rackets, even on a small scale of a local shop. Property law works very differently over there, which is to say it doesn't quite exist.
Volozh could stay in Moscow and keep Yandex, though he was not acting CEO for some time.
But, he decided he prefers Israel (residing "behind the bump" in general sense). In modern political climate, you have to choose between having your pie and eating it.
It's like Zuckerberg choosing to leave to Singapore and stay there in case a war in Taiwan breaks up, while ideologically aligning with China, of course, I'm not so sure that in that scenario his US-based assets will remain intact.
The magic is that in the US, things that are illegal in most of the civilized world like lobbying, private campaign donations and PACs are enshrined in the law.
Ergo, see momma! no corruption!
Ah yes, just like in Russia we all know someone who was put in the trunk of a car by the FBI and driven around the forest just because they didn't want to pay up to the local director and his network of cronies. Or we all know of a prominent local case of a murderer or rapist that was released from prison (without any legal basis), then went on to fight a war for 6 months, then came back to our city with new military experience, now knowing how to handle rifles, grenades and man portable rocket launchers, and with severe PTSD.
You honestly don't remember when people were being snatched off the street in unmarked vans during the BLM protests under Trump? It was caught on video several times.
I am Russian and personally I know nobody with the former or the latter experience.
I don't doubt such cases exist somewhere out there. But the prevalence of such revelations is from people re-posting emigrant press, who often do not have any firsthand Russia experience for a few years now.
> personally I know nobody with the former or the latter experience
I have personally received threats of having such experience, from a director of the company I was working for at that time. Happened in Moscow around 2010. The director was from FSB, unfortunately the company forgot to mention that detail in the job ad.
> emigrant press, who often do not have any firsthand Russia experience
LOL. The reason you only read about cases like that in emigrant press, local journalists don't want to be murdered in a forest.
> local journalists don't want to be murdered in a forest
I can see this pronounced difference between Palestinean journalists and journalists specializing in Russia.
The former are present on the ground and fall victim to the current military conflict.
The latter are comfortable writing about Russia from their rented Israeli or German flats, while not setting the foot in Russia in years. That would be way too dangerous. Unsurprisingly they are not having much cred with actual Russians who do live there.
Not to mention setting their foot in the area of the conflict and having a firsthand experience of what happens there on the Russian side of the front. That would be an absolute taboo.
Most Americans knowledge of Russia is based on movies depicting the Yeltsin era during the 90s. For them Moscow is like a giant prohibition era Chicago in a cyberpunk scenario.
Fast forward to 2020s - the gangs are now reorganized under the Siloviki, the "strong man". Methods have changed from being shot in the street to being defenestrated. Meanwhile the state uses beatings and barrier troops to enforce military discipline at war. It also castrates and starves POWs and performs organized, list-based murder on the territories that it occupies.
I could go on and on, but yeah. Russia fundamentally hasn't changed in the past ~few hundred years (since its founding really), unlike countries in Europe. As the world moved forward some things remained unchanged, such as preemptive compliance, learned helplessness, lack of civil society, and the culture of violence, ranks, racism and humiliation.
> preemptive compliance, learned helplessness, lack of civil society, and the culture of violence, ranks, racism and humiliation
First I seriously doubt that other countries moved away from that.
Second I don't notice these things as much here (in the capital at least).
People see only what they want to see I guess...
The FT one (https://archive.ph/YiA3q) says almost nothing. The Bloomberg one (https://archive.ph/AsVYu) says "The Russian unit represented more than 95% of the Yandex Group’s consolidated revenues in the first nine months of 2023, and approximately 95% of its consolidated assets and employees." Not much left!
