2. You may read it differently, only if you are kind of very biased towards 'beautiful' Yandex, cause even in official statement it was written that's due to Russian politics system :) plus - read Government statement before and after this board was appointment. - 2 of 12 government appointed? lets read:
The PIF will be governed by a board comprising 11 directors, including representatives from five leading Russian universities (Higher School of Economics, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Moscow State University, St Petersburg State University and the St Petersburg National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics) and three non-governmental institutions (the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), Moscow School of Management Skolkovo and the Endowment of Moscow School #57)
all above is government appointed and 'pro'-government.
3. Yes, that's what Tigran told as CEO. We have to care about 20k employees and all that bullshit when at the same time Yandex.ru page showed all news that 'everything is fine, there is no war, some special kind of operation against nazi' being one of the major player of Russian propaganda.
No, you can't be 'anti-war' and doing that, you can't be silent, and yes if 20k stopped to worry about have 0 ability to buy new iPhone and millions of people service disrupted may be we saw not 4k people on the streets of Moscow but 100k-200k and then we could talk with government.
So yes, exactly that behavior allowing corrupt and crazy government doing anything they want.
lets talk about 'small things' as you say: 1. Bullshit. Meduza, novaya, skr - they could do it. they could close it as you say but they choose not. They are currently sold Yandex news to VK group, but basically they are telling look we are showing not Yandex news, but VK-news on our main page - we have no power over there. Disgusting.
// It is quite clear that in the recent years Yandex was trying to migrate from Russia as soon as possible to be less dependent on the whims of the regime. They did find the niches where they could be successful outside of Russia (at the very least - delivery, taxi and ride-heiling, cloud) but didn't have time to execute the plan.//
They were trying to do it as part of Yandex Group. So no, they was not trying to 'migrate from Russia', they was trying to find new markets, like they was trying do search in Turkey at 2010.