Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

ir.yandex

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 359 posts

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#131

Post by ekabod »

khzw8yyy wrote: post #104
throwaway_20357 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is little hope of normalizing relations with Russia, so unfortunately these "Western assets" need to be written off anyway. A large part of them ($98bn) came from Cyprus which might just be round-tripping Russian money.

All wars have something in common: they end. That thought in your head about lack of hope of normalizing relations is just the current propaganda working. Edit: it's amazing just how short-sighted people can be. Look, we still bring up the Nazis as an unassailable argument for how something is bad. And yet the war with Germany ended and they are now a US ally fighting Russia. I'm sure in the midst of WW2 the common f…

Hundred Years' War between the Kingdom of England and France.

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#132

Post by ufmace »

khzw8yyy wrote: post #104
throwaway_20357 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is little hope of normalizing relations with Russia, so unfortunately these "Western assets" need to be written off anyway. A large part of them ($98bn) came from Cyprus which might just be round-tripping Russian money.

All wars have something in common: they end. That thought in your head about lack of hope of normalizing relations is just the current propaganda working. Edit: it's amazing just how short-sighted people can be. Look, we still bring up the Nazis as an unassailable argument for how something is bad. And yet the war with Germany ended and they are now a US ally fighting Russia. I'm sure in the midst of WW2 the common f…

It's true that all wars end eventually. But this happening seems to me a sign that relations might not normalize quite so easily after. Why else would businesses with operations in both Russia and EU be seeking to split themselves apart neatly in advance of sanctions that would make such operations extremely difficult?

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#133

Post by thriftwy »

nradov wrote: post #111
thriftwy wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, at the current point of time Russia's economy and infrastructure are mostly intact. I'm not sure why is that for a dramatic change. If you look at Iran, it also has its infrastructure in quite OK conditions - perhaps in better shape than all of their neighbours, and now that may even include Turkey. Russia is larger and has not self-inflicted being a theocracy. As for the losses of both sides, I'd suggest leavi…

As the war drags on we can expect to see escalation in Ukrainian strikes against Russian infrastructure targets such as refineries. Russia is already short of air defense systems and isn't able to provide much coverage for civilian targets. Whether this works will depend on the level of sustained foreign aid for Ukraine. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/01/25/ukrain...

With the current rate of attacks Ukraine is not able to cause any noticeable infrastructural issues, and anything beyond approximately the Volga river is not reachable by any weapon systems.

It's sort of a moving target like "How long would it take for Freddy Krueger to kill all Chinese teenagers"

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#134

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

vzaliva wrote: post #115

"The consideration will be paid in a combination of: (i) a cash equivalent of at least RUB 230 billion" This money will go to Russian economy and will indirectly support the war. Instead these money should have been frozen in an escrow account and potentially used to rebuild Ukrainian economy.

All Yandex's money is already in Russia, in Sberbank or smth. Good luck telling Sberbank to freeze it and send to Ukraine. In this deal, they are salvaging some money and taking it out of Russia.

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#135

Post by whimsicalism »

gtirloni wrote: post #8

50% discount for Russian oil oligarchs. I guess they really think Russia will continue to cut ties with the rest of the world for a very long time and are cutting their losses now.

or there are penalties that they are about to start running into

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#136

Post by mathverse »

jszymborski wrote: post #101
mathverse wrote: post #97

Wonder what happened to Jetbrains. They have a CZ entity but the largest part of the workforce was in Russia.

All their Russian offices were closed, including sales and R&D activities. https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2022/12/06/update-on-jetbrai...

This perfectly shows that we need to be remote. They did not wanna all move to Czechia or any other single location.

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#137

Post by swdev281634 »

thriftwy wrote: post #52
H8crilA wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#138

Post by kergonath »

whimsicalism wrote: post #129
kergonath wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking to people actually living in the place could give you a clue. Putin is a neocon, sure, but no bureaucrat started this war and Ukraine is very unlikely to just fold and submit if the US stop their support. Liberals have also nothing to do with Russian aggression.

This war will likely end with Ukraine losing some amount of land - it is just a matter of if they ever accept this or whether they want a Korea style frozen conflict.

You say it like it’s their choice. Moldova never asked for Transnistria. It’s fairly SOP for Russia to take bites from its neighbours, let’s stop blaming the victims. Whatever Russia ends up doing, they are preparing for themselves a second Chechnya at the very least.

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#139

Post by twixfel »

whimsicalism wrote: post #128
kergonath wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ending wars and normalising relations can take a hell of a lot of time, though. Just ask people who lived in the Balkans, central or Eastern Europe, Korea, or in Palestine at some point in the 20th century, to name but a few examples. Or those who lived in a constant background of warfare basically anywhere in the world at any point in time. The pax romana and the stability brought by well-managed empires are remarqu…

I agree that animosity is deep rooted between neighbors. But I suspect it is less deep between distant countries that have had working relationships in the past.

I think there's deep animosity between Russia and much of the West.

It's very easy for Americans to shrug their shoulders and say "we don't care it's a long way away", regardless of whether or not that would be a historic surrender for the global hegemon, but we Europeans cannot. It's on our doorstep. Russia has not just attacked Ukraine, but all of Europe. There will never be normalised relations with Russia whilst he is in power, just as there never could be normalised relations with Adolf Hitler once he had crossed the Rubicon and started WW2.

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#140

Post by H8crilA »

elzbardico wrote: post #103
thriftwy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Post reply on HN