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Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

ir.yandex

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Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#161

Post by twixfel »

whimsicalism wrote: post #149
twixfel wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The comparison between Putin and Hitler is ridiculous. Europe’s economy is in shambles, they do not have the power to push back if Russia and the US were to push for détente never mind that the country with the most EU influence (Germany) is a major dove on this issue.

It's not ridiculous at all. Not all leaders can be negotiated with, that is simply my point. Maybe as an American you do not understand the depth of feeling, it does not affect you because you don't live here and subsequently you don't care. You can regress into the isolationism that the US likes to embrace every now and then. But we still have to live with an imperialist Russia on our door step.

> (Germany) is a major dove on this issue.

No, they're not dovish, they're just not leaders and not willing to take initiative and require others to move first. That stems from their history. They've sent huge amounts of aid already to Ukraine (~1% of GDP versus 0.2% of GDP for the USA).

> Europe’s economy is in shambles

I mean, it's not as good as the USA's, but it's not in shambles. It's relatively OK. I live here. I'd rather live here than in Russia. Russia is a glorified petrol station with nukes and a military. Europe's economy still absolutely dwarfs Russia's. When I speak to my (many) Russian colleagues, it's clear they'd rather be here in Germany than in Russia.

> US were to push for détente

It's not realistic. The only person who is going to do that is Trump. There's no scenario where we Europeans just give up our security and let imperial war conquests become acceptable on our continent (not yours, yank) for the sake of Trump's ego. Why? Because we think he's completely retarded. Only Americans like him. And how would we benefit exactly from trading away our security? How can the US force us? All it would do is seal the USA's historic break from its European allies (And I know it's not popular at the moment in the USA, but any one with a basic understanding of geopolitics knows that the USA's strongest asset its just how many rich and powerful allies it has). Good luck standing up to China alone, in that case. Then the West is truly fucked!

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#163

Post by nottorp »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #13

>(Russian Google) Are there people here who don't know Yandex? Genuinely curious, if you didn't know what it is I'd like to hear from you.

I've heard of Yandex but never used it.

Actually I have a question: what are they salvaging this way, considering the comments say all their operations and people are physically in Russia?

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#164

Post by nottorp »

ziddoap wrote: post #79
fragmede wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This community's favorite thing is to complain about something that's ill defined. A post about BGP without saying it's the border gateway protocol will have its comments go off on a stupid tangent of if an HN reader should be expected to know what BGP is. (seriously people, go Google the term and don't demand everyone spoon-feed your intellectual midgetry!) Thus, an explanation that Yandex is Russian Google is to tr…

Nevermind. I was wrong. Asking someone to write out an acronym is too much.

I don't think Yandex is an acronym...

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#165

Post by rizpanjwani »

reisse wrote: post #119
krunck wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "anti-war" do you mean in general or in regard to a particular war?

Ex-CEO of Russian Yandex made a post in an internal network explaining she moved to Israel, and, among other things, saying "I don't want to live in a country waging wars with its neighbours (sic)". I wonder if she understood her own hypocrisy.

[flagged]

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#166

Post by somenameforme »

para_parolu wrote: post #141
whimsicalism wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That happens in 2014 when Ukraine lost Crimea. They accepted it and lived on. There is zero safety guarantees for them.

Not quite! The immediate history here plays a huge role in where we're at today. In the 2014 the US backed a [coup, revolution, insurrection - whatever you want to call it] in Ukraine that saw their democratically elected pro-Russian President overthrown. Numerous Ukrainian territories that also leaned pro-Russia refused to recognize the new government and declared their independence, the Donbas region and Crimea among them.

For the 8 years from 2014 to 2022 Ukraine was intermittently attacking and shelling these breakaway territories (excepting Crimea, which had become part of Russia) which were (and are) largely populated with ethnic Russians, and Russia was "secretly" protecting them. This led to a series of treaties, The Minsk Accords [1], to try to arrange peace between Russia and Ukraine, and give the breakaway territories some sort of special status while remaining under Ukraine.

These treaties were always violated. And while this was happening Ukraine was increasingly fortifying and arming itself, as well as seeking to join NATO - which NATO was, sincerely or not, indulging. This all really set the stage for where we are today. It also sets the stage for where we're going tomorrow, because the inability to maintain any sort of a peace over these regions is going to make obtaining a 'minimally unfavorable' settlement for Ukraine, over this war, much more difficult.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#167

Post by khzw8yyy »

rurp wrote: post #112
khzw8yyy wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So do countries, if we're looking at a long enough time scale. There is no end in sight for the war in Ukraine and when the end comes it's likely to be messy. It might be more of a pause than a true end, and one or both sides will likely be pretty unhappy with the outcome. It could be many years before Russia and the west go back to a comfortable economic relationship.

Maybe the problem is the shortness of sight rather than the lack of an end?

Rest assured, if the powers that be decide that "Russia is good now" they will convince you of the same within 6 months.

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#169

Post by twixfel »

whimsicalism wrote: post #146
kergonath wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course it is not just their choice. Russia has indicated their willingness to accept current holdings (for now, you are right there are no guarantees). Ukraine could and should get better than just that, but this notion of taking back Crimea is a pipe dream and I don’t support continued funding until that goal is realized.

If you want to be extremely cynical and seek to strictly extend and project the USA's power as harshly and effectively as possible, the war in Ukraine was God's gift to the USA. They get to basically take out Russia (China's key geopolitical ally) without losing a single American life, for a tiny fraction of the amount they're used to spending on wars.

And yet it's American nationalists themselves who want it all to stop, to throw all of its European allies under the bus and burn the alliance with the rest of the Western world to the ground. An amazing and almost impressive act of self harm.

It's not so much "America first" with you lot, it's "America alone".

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#170

Post by cpursley »

whimsicalism wrote: post #126
alephnerd wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slight edit to this. I didn't realize the core founding team was pushed out and largely committed Aliyah for Israel after the 2022 War began. Not surprised either, as the core team was fairly progressive and anti-war, as a lot of Russian techies are. Also, it was the core team that was working on forward facing bets - sort of like a more functional version of Larry Page and Sergey Brin - and they're keeping those for…

Given the move from Russia to Israel and the timing of when most Russian techies left, I suspect it is more out of fear of the draft than out of principle. Not that I blame them - I doubt I would leave the US even during an unjust war… but a draft?

> most Russian techies left

This was about them getting paid fat paychecks from western clients/employers not out of draft fears.

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