This is Yandex's European arm divesting itself from the Search+Mail business they have in Russia.
In the press release, this was even mentioned - that Yandex's Russian management (aka most of it's management) would be buying out their Russian operations.
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 forward facing bets.
Middle management appears to still be operating in Russia though.
Edit:
To people commenting below,
IT Professionals and most other white collar jobs are draft exempted in Russia [0]
To make up for the unfairness, mobilized Russian soldiers are being paid Russian/Eastern European white collar level salaries ($2,500/mo) [1]
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-excludes-some-it...
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/opinion/russia-ukraine-wa...
Most of the founding leadership's net worth was tied to Yandex's NYSE stock (YNDX) which was delisted due to the sanctions regime.
Back in the day, Russian companies (just like Chinese companies pre-COVID) would cross list stock in both the Russian Market and the NYSE for an IPO.
Basically, this is them cashing out and concentrating on their European operations, but the actual stuff Yandex is known for (search, mail, AI/ML) is still based in Russia and operated by Russian managers.
Not that I blame them - I doubt I would leave the US even during an unjust war… but a draft?
This was about them getting paid fat paychecks from western clients/employers not out of draft fears.
To make up for the unfairness, mobilized Russian soldiers are being paid Russian/Eastern European white collar level salaries ($2,500/mo) [1]
The issue is if you're a Russian contractor working for a western company, how is the western company supposed to pay you? Russia's banking system has been decoupled from the west, and even Asian banks in China and India (major trading partners of Russia) are hesitant to fill the gap out of fears of secondary sanctions.
If you want to earn dollars, best to move to a Russian speaking country that isn't sanctioned like Kazakhstan, Georgia, or Bulgaria or to an easy to move country for Russians like Turkiye, Serbia, UAE, etc.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-excludes-some-it...
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/opinion/russia-ukraine-wa...
$2500/mo is way higher than I would have thought they were paying these soldiers.
>> This was about them getting paid fat paychecks from western clients/employers not out of draft fears.
> Not a new phenom, whereas the draft is.
Russian techies started to leave immediately following the invasion that started in Feb 2022, because Western firms put in policies forbidding anyone in Russia from having access to their systems due to security concerns. If they were working for or contracting with those firms and stayed in Russia, they'd lose their jobs.
It looks like Putin first announced the draft in Sept. 21, 2022, but by then the techies working for or contracting with Western firms had already left or quit.
Techies bring in $$$, so they are exempted from the mobilization.