EU removes Russian tech magnate from sanctions list
The European Union has lifted sanctions on a Russian technology magnate, in a rare break from a policy of punishing the country’s elites for invading Ukraine.
Arkady Volozh, co-founder of Russia’s largest technology company Yandex, was removed from the sanctions list after condemning the invasion of Ukraine and taking public steps to cut ties with Russia. The decision was announced in published a document Wednesday by the European Council.
Mr Volozh is one of the most prominent Russian figures to be cleared of sanctions by a major Western power since the start of the war. The move was welcomed by some members of Russia’s opposition, who have called on the West to use both incentives and punishments to put pressure on the Kremlin.
“There is finally some logic in the West’s actions,” Abbas Gallyamov, a former Kremlin speechwriter turned political adviser, wrote on the messaging app Telegram. “If you speak out against” the war, he added, “then the sanctions will be lifted.”
The European Union placed Mr. Volozh and one of his deputies on the sanctions list in the early weeks of the war for promoting Kremlin propaganda on the Yandex news aggregation service. Yandex, commonly known as Russia’s Google, said it had no choice but to follow strict Russian censorship laws. It sold the news service shortly afterwards.
Mr Volozh, who is based in Israel, resigned from Yandex after sanctions were imposed. He had also stopped traveling to Russia and strongly condemned the war last year.
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine is barbaric, and I am categorically against it,” Volozh said in a statement in August.
Yandex’s parent company, in which Mr. Volozh owns 8 percent of shares, closed a deal last month worth about $5 billion to divest all its assets in Russia, which includes a popular browser and ride-hailing app. The sale was approved by Yandex shareholders last week.
Mr Volozh’s spokesman had no immediate comment on the EU decision.
Hundreds of Russian businessmen, politicians and officials have been targeted by Western sanctions since the invasion, as part of a strategy to increase the Kremlin’s political costs for continuing the war.
But some Kremlin opponents said the West could increase its chances of turning Russian elites against President Vladimir V. Putin by pairing punishment with relief for those who publicly condemn the war.
Such relief has been rare. Britain lifted sanctions on outspoken Russian banker Oleg Tinkov last year after he condemned the war and renounced his Russian citizenship. He had paid a domestic price for his criticism: the government threatened to take over the bank he founded, he said. forcing him to sell his stake at what he called a “fire sale” price.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry S. Peskov last year called businessmen who spoke out against the war to gain sanctions relief “traitors.”
Relieving sanctions has also proven controversial among some of Putin’s opponents, who reason that few individuals in Russia are able to acquire wealth or power without forming close ties to the government.
Last year, a prominent Russian opposition leader, Leonid Volkov, resigned from an anti-corruption group he led after a leaked letter emerged showing he was lobbying the European Union to lift sanctions on a Russian oligarch.
Mr. Volkov, who served as a senior aide to opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, said in a series of social media posts When he announced his resignation, he said he was wrong to think that sanctions relief could “set off a chain reaction of public condemnation of the war and a division within Russia’s elites.”