alapshin

No. Original owner of Yandex (Arkady Volozh) sold Yandex to a group of Russian investors (approved by the government) and left with small number of assets in a form of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebius_Group Everything else that people usually associate with Yandex (search, mail, taxi, marketplace etc.) remains under Russian ownership.

This is ranking by GDP (PPP).

According to Worldbank https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/icp/brief/VC_Uses and OECD https://www.oecd.org/en/data/insights/data-explainers/2024/0... this metric is a poor choice when trying to establish some sort of strict country ranking.

Selling its customers to authoritarian regimes is par for the course for Apple. Anyone living in such countries and worried about privacy are better off buying Pixel and installing GrapheneOS.

> There's nothing done yet, but the idea is absolutely brilliant.

It's pointless when it is not backed by real sanctions. It does nothing to punish brazen actions of autocrats while giving them fuel for propaganda.

> Punishing autocrats on their ego instead of their people sounds like a much better approach.

How about real sanctions on autocrats, their cronies, families and businesses? Sanction oligarchs, sanction businesses that are main source of income for autocrats etc. If you want to help ordinary people - simplify immigration.

> Given that economic sanctions usually fail to overthrow the regimes they are intended to punish

Maybe not, but they cripple country development and leave autocrats with less resources for a future actions.