Ex-Yandex denies any connection to Yandex

Nebius has “no history with Yandex”, its Chief Marketing Officer has told ERR.

Well, except being the same legal entity with the same CEO and hundreds of the same engineers from Russia.

Ex-Yandex is currently on a PR offensive in the Baltics as it prepares to open its first AI data centre here, despite security concerns that prompted Italy to block Nebius from acquiring an Italian company in 2023.

Don’t worry though. CMO Tom Blackwell told ERR that Nebius is “probably the most vetted company in the world”, which is about as reassuring as a restaurant claiming to have installed the most rat traps.

Ok, there might be a reason?

“Suffice to say,” Tom continues, “if there were concerns about us, it would be very difficult to build a business working with some of the largest, security-conscious companies in the world. 20 billion dollar deals with Microsoft, Meta, and others are hard to come by if there are security concerns.”

This is the main defence now repeated about Nebius to a sceptical public: Does anyone really think big tech in the US would fail to understand or adequately address the threat of corrupt foreign influence in our democracies?

They may need to read the room a little bit better on that one.

Let’s back up a bit.

Nebius boss Arkady Volozh spent two decades at the helm of Yandex, building it into Russia’s most dominant tech firm.

That’s two decades in which Russia descended ever deeper into an aggressor terror state.

Yandex, its staff, and Volozh could not possibly have been uninvolved or insignificant in that.

Yandex had control over huge amounts of data about people’s lives and also the news they consumed inside Russia but also Belarus, Ukraine, and beyond.

The FSB has long had backdoor access to all telecommunications by statute. Yandex then provided additional data on activists and dissidents, first documented in 2011 when Navalny donors were targeted with data supplied by Yandex.

Meanwhile, the news portal was heavily pro-Kremlin and pro-war, operating large scale censorship for the full scale invasion.

Volozh eventually separated himself from the monster he built, defying the Kremlin in a way that his lawyers described as courageous.

That courage seems apocryphal.

When he was placed under EU sanctions after the start of the full scale war, his response was actually quite petulant, evasive, entitled, and tone-deaf.

While everyone else was busy responding to the crisis of the full scale war, Volozh was lecturing back about why sanctions were counterproductive. He said he would technically comply as long as they were in force.

He never acknowledged why he was placed under sanctions, nor attempted any explanations for his role up to that point.

It was only after 18 months of full scale war and 18 months of silence from Volozh that he suddenly found the courage to make a one-off anti-war statement, coincidentally just days before his lawyers submitted their application to overturn the sanctions placed on him, which also rested on the restructuring of Yandex.

Volozh says there were good reasons why he couldn’t speak out earlier, although has never deemed it necessary to elaborate on that. It doesn’t appear to be anything to do with supporting Ukraine.

In the subsequent three years, he has made no further courageous comments nor appears to have used his considerable wealth to make any significant amends, such as by donating to Ukraine.

And, after all this, the Nebius PR guy has the cheek to wander in like none of this happened and defer to the expertise of tech bros on the risk of Russia, even when talking to people in the Baltic countries with a slightly better track record on this topic.

When Yandex says it is the most vetted company in the world, what exactly was being vetted? Mostly just that corporate structure and tick box compliance stuff.

The key vulnerability is having so many employees with family and interests in Russia who can be so easily compromised. That’s not something they are addressing.

The Nebius team should understand that vulnerability very well because so many of them helped build the system in Russia that exploits it.

So what's the defence for Nebius?

Even some people who usually like our content thought we were being a bit too harsh on Nebius.

They argue that Yandex/Nebius employees are decent people who did everything they could within a threatening system and then successfully cut off all Russian connections after the start of the war because they are so opposed to how their tech was being used.

However, it should first always be clarified that 2022 was not the start of Russia's war against Ukraine, nor is it a point at which people can suddenly choose to absolve themselves of any involvement in Russia - and its actions that led to the full scale war - and expect to be suddenly hailed as courageous. There will always be questions to answer, at the very least.

Why has Volozh only made a reluctant one-off statement about the war, despite all this?

His defenders argue that his tongue is tied due to security risks. If that's still the case then this is also a strong argument against letting Nebius anywhere near critical infrastructure in the West, even if he happens to be a good guy.

Plenty of companies, both large and small, make huge contributions to Ukraine and are repeatedly outspoken in their unambiguous support - especially here in the Baltics. Nebius has no excuse, only an added morale incentive to do so too.

This whole situation is tricky and conflicting for many people, including many with good intentions who made the decision to invest so much capital into Nebius to help reinvent them. But some things need to change.

Nebius should drop a lot of the PR fluff and instead address its past, the suitability of all now involved in the company, and finally show some genuine courage in support of the West's security and values.