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Comment by Ndymium | Hacker News Reader

Yep, their electricity sales contract ~~expired~~ (EDIT: ended for unspecified reasons) and they don't have a new contract. Their electricity transfer contract is still valid because their Finnish company is not a part of sanctions. (Electricity sales and transfer is separate in Finland.) When they get a new electricity sales contract, then the transfer company will reconnect power.

I think the only matter here related to the war could be that electricity sales companies might be reluctant to sell a contract to them, due to PR reasons. But I bet one of them will, and they will get their power back.

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As far as I understood, their electricity contract did not expire, or at least that was not explicitly mentioned. The transfer company, which now cut them from the grid, was their electricity seller until the end of 2021, and from the beginning of 2022 they had another seller provide them electricity, but that has ended for reasons unknown.

>"Hänen mukaansa aiemmin sähköä myi Yandexille Nivos Energia, mutta sopimus päättyi jo vuodenvaihteessa. Tilalle tuli uusi sähkönmyyjä, joka on nyt lopettanut sähkönmyynnin."

You're correct, though I wonder what the reason could be other than expiring. Thinking out loud, maybe they've had trouble paying due to money transfer issues between Finland and Russia. In any case it's not directly due to any sanctions as the company is not sanctioned.

I guess the company was Ilmatar Energy, and they had signed a five-year contract, which started in January. Some contract violation is required to cancel that.

https://www.saurenergy.com/solar-energy-news/russian-yandex-...

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/yandex-signs-5-ye...

I wonder. Every contract I've ever signed, has clauses about "unless legally compelled".

EG, if it is an NDA, it often talks about the NDA being void, if compelled to testify etc etc

Most supply contracts should have the same concept. That is, "this contract isn't enforcable, if a party is legally compelled to do thing $x".

This doesn't need to be written into the contract inside the EU. Law is stronger than contracts, legislators and courts can pre-empt contracts in part or in whole.

I wonder how often these pre-empt cases can be handled privately. E.g. what is the likelihood that it has happened in this case without public knowledge.

The new seller went bankrupt? The massive increased price in electricity and long term contracts with other parties could have made them unable to continue running. Specially if it is some rather small company.

It seems unlikely for a company on the scale of Yandex to make a deal with a small company unless they had literally no other choice. And like nicce pointed out, they seemed to have a five-year contract with Ilmatar Energy Oy, which in 2020 did 30.3 million euros in revenue and 1.9 million euros in profit, and seem to still be solidly in the business of selling wind power.

> I think the only matter here related to the war could be that electricity sales companies might be reluctant to sell a contract to them, due to PR reasons. But I bet one of them will, and they will get their power back

Not necessary, as actual engineers and electricians working for such companies could also refuse to make that connection. Also it's likely that sanctions will be more severe soon as Russian troops will do more crimes.

What crimes are going to move the needle further at this point

They could shoot down a plane full of NATO nationals (again), or deploy chemical weapons of mass destruction in European cities (again)?

Oh oh, want about more extra-judicial assassinations in NATO countries?

123m spire ect ect

(be sad)

“Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.”

As per site guidelines

Fixed it just for you =)

Russia hasn't even begun retaliating for Finland's NATO application yet, which they announced they would (potentially even with 'military consequences', as per a Kremlin spokesperson). Besides, the EU has been ramping up sanctions against Russia pretty much continuously since the start of the war, so we're definitely not at peak sanctions yet (unless Russian aggression suddenly ceases).

Russia has nuclear weapons, but seemingly nothing else sitting around to use. They’re over extended in Ukraine already.

They have plenty of artillery too, so they can gradually turn cities to rubble. But they simply don't have then power to occupy much territory with any real degree of control, except maybe in the east.

It doesn’t seem like it. Their artillery is old and can’t aim well. Their intel sucks. Their supplies suck.

It seems very unlikely that they could launch another front against Finland and achieve anything, even shelling a city.

Yes, I agree on Finland, they just don't seem to have the resources or logistics to fight on two fronts like that. My comment was more with respect to Ukraine. You don't need pinpoint accuracy-- or much accuracy at all-- to gradually demolish the city. The ability hit the desired quadrant may suffice.

As Ukrainians push more resources towards the east Russia's problem might be that such artillery isn't quite mobile, there's no run-and-gun capability there, while weapons capable of taking them out are man-portable.

Despite that, I don't see a happy ending for the Ukrainians here. As much as Russia has already lost, they can't accept defeat in this without the power structure suffering what might be a deadly blow.

Russia's retaliations will be on the order of pointing nukes at Finland and deploying troops in key locations near its borders.

And all of those are likely to trigger further sanctions.

There's no need to make any new connections. This is just a push of a button in the computer to make them have electricity again.

As long as there's no sanctions against Yandex itself, then there's no legal reason to prevent that from happening either.

I don't think a contract expiring would lead to power being cut off this suddenly; there will have been extensive negotiations beforehand and a grace period.

It is "sudden" when viewed with an external lens.

The only example I can think of where companies make potentially negative contract negotiations public is when cable companies enter into pissing matches with content providers (i.e. call your local NBC station now and tell them you want to keep their channel on DirecTV!)

The grace period of 10 days ended recently.

Grace periods tend to be shorter for companies with a high likelihood of defaulting due to say the threat of international sanctions.

Ended for unspecified reasons? So is Yandex going to sue back? Is that an option?

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