In 2022, shortly after the creator faced sanctions at the onset of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the company sold its news aggregation service.
The domestic businesses of Yandex, which is frequently referred to as Russia’s Google, have been sold at a considerably reduced price. According to Bloomberg, the search and services giant, which has currently relocated its headquarters to the Netherlands, has sold its businesses in Russia for a total of 475 billion rubles, which is equivalent to $5.2 billion in cash and shares. The management group is one of the new owners, along with Lukoil, the largest domestic energy company in Russia, and Alexander Ryazanov, a Russian billionaire and a former official at Gazprom. Other new owners include Lukoil. Since Yandex has severed its relations with Russia, the company will be in a better position to expand and collaborate with other companies, given the sanctions that have been imposed on companies that have ties to Russia as a result of the invasion of Ukraine.
Subsequent to the war, Yandex has been subjected to ramifications, including being removed from the Nasdaq. At the beginning of the summer of 2022, the European Union threatened to impose penalties on Arkady Volozh, the company’s founder, because it was alleged that the corporation supported Russian propaganda. Almost immediately, the corporation sold its news aggregation service, and Volozh publicly voiced his opposition to the war.
At the end of the year 2022, the first reports that Yandex would sever its relations with Russia surfaced. When this occurred, the corporation was in the process of facing sanctions, and it was claimed that there was no way forward for the company to grow projects without the assistance of Western technology. However, in order for Yandex NV to be granted permission to separate from its Russian operations, it needed a year and a half of negotiations between Yandex and the Kremlin, which was an essential step throughout the process. A reduction of at least fifty percent was included in the final agreement, which is a standard procedure in situations where the Kremlin considers the registered country, which in this case is the Netherlands, to be anti-democratic.