Thread by @WIRED

For over 20 years, Yandex has been known as “Russia’s Google.” WIRED was about to profile its billionaire CEO and cofounder Arkady Yurievich Volozh. Then Russia invaded Ukraine. trib.al/ZDmnkWX
📸: WIRED/Getty 1/14

Soon after, the price of Yandex shares on NASDAQ plummeted by more than 50%. Uber announced that three of its executives were resigning from the board of Yandex Taxi, and the transport minister of Lithuania asked Google and Apple to remove the app for Yandex Taxi. 2/14

When the war hit, Yandex was in the midst of courting the West. It was testing self-driving cars in the US and launched delivery services in London and Paris, and had its eye on Dubai. 📸: WIRED/Getty 3/14

Things weren’t any better at home. On March 1, Lev Gershenzon, the former head of Yandex’s news division, wrote: At “least 30 million Russian users” of Yandex’s home news page “see that there is no war.” He told WIRED that Volozh “is responsible for this news page.” 4/14

Yandex grew, in part, by accommodating Vladimir Putin, who became president at the end of 1999. But Volozh and his business partner Ilya Segalovich kept a low profile, occasionally helping Putin maintain an everyman image with the Russian public. 5/14

The death of Segalovich in 2013 marked a new chapter for Volozh, bereft of his childhood friend and Yandex’s leader whose “ethical standards,” as Volozh wrote, “set the standard for all of us.”📸: WIRED/Getty 6/14

With Segalovich gone, Putin’s grasp began to tighten. The company’s culture changed as Russia’s political momentum gravitated towards conservatism. And the environment Yandex operated in became increasingly nationalistic. 📸: WIRED/Getty 7/14

Just six days into the war, Forbes reported, the market capitalization of Yandex had plunged from its peak of $30 billion to below $7 billion, while Volozh’s net worth, recently as high as $2.6 billion, was down to $580 million. 8/14

Still, the mogul remained publicly silent, Yandex’s Moscow-based executive director and deputy CEO Tigran Khudaverdyan assumed the role of the company’s voice. “What is happening is unbearable,” he wrote in a Facebook post. 9/14

While the US and European governments were sanctioning other Russian business figures with Kremlin ties, Yandex executives were seemingly spared—that is, until March 15, when the European Union sanctioned Khudaverdyan, with an asset freeze and travel ban. 10/14

It was revealed that the day Russia invaded Ukraine, Khudaverdyan and other Russian business leaders had met with Putin at the Kremlin to discuss an action plan in the wake of Western sanctions. He resigned immediately, begging the question was Volozh next? 11/14

With no public statement from Volozh in sight, WIRED reached out to reopen talks. A call was arranged for March 11—then a spokesperson texted to postpone: “Something urgent has come up.” There was no elaboration. 12/14

Read more about the rise and fall of the baron of Russian tech here: trib.al/ZDmnkWX 13/14

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