[0] https://kz.kursiv.media/en/2023-08-07/co-founder-of-yandex-e...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/ukraine-crisis-yandex-volozh...
Would you issue such a statement in his position? Think carefully. If you don't, you will probably have twitter brigades trying to smear your name. If you do, your family back home might be at risk, and you will probably never be able to visit them again.
Personally, I cannot in good faith demand anyone condemn the war, if to do so, they are putting family and friends freedoms at risk.
While some people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasyl_Makukh ) sacrificed their lives in protest of Soviet Russia invasion into Czechoslovakia, timely public statement is the least he could do.
Not your call, nor for any other arm chair general.
Right or wrong.
He could've left russia long time ago along with family and friends.
But he enjoys russian money even though he has more than enough for 100 lifetimes.
So yeah, I can in good faith demand from him and most other russians to condemn the war. Because the reason it happened is precisely that everyone does nothing in russia.
Most of them flee the country because they don't want to get into army, and even when they are abroad and in safety - they still don't condemn the war.
So fear has zero to do with their position.
Do Twitter crowds actually do that? Do they keep track of anyone more or less prominent, and write in their comments "Have you spoken out against the war yet?" "I haven't seen you denounce the war"?
Including expats, refugees, objectors, what have you. Your contract with Namecheap is terminated for being connected to Russia. Prove to us you're not, if you want to keep your service.
His justification? Well we have a lot of Ukrainian staff and you know, we're not with Russia therefore we're against Russia, therefore...
> If we were virtue signaling we wouldn't willingly be giving up a not non significant part of our business. This hurts us financially but it's the right thing to do, at least for us. Your leader/country is already killing innocent civilians/ukranians. They are putting it all on the line with their lives. They didn't ask for this yet they are dying for it. Change needs to come and the only way it can is for the Russian population to put it on the line as well.
See ~2 years ago when every opensource project was forced to publish a code of conduct and diversity and inclusion policy... Often the people asking for the policies weren't even users of the software involved, let alone interested in writing code for the proect. That campaign seems to have ended, and nobody cares if your project has either anymore.
Has the movement to rename every master branch to main quietened down as well?
By that measure, the movement to rename every 'master' branch to 'main' has been a resounding failure.
(If you look at the events at the time it sprung up, you could pretty safely say that it was encouraged as a way to distract from the then-current "GitHub is doing business with US's ICE!" hatestorm, and man was it successful.)
But the major git hosting platforms are only using 'main' as the default for new branches, and there is significant enough social stigma for new projects that it's preferred to use main.
I don't have precise statistics, but I would happily wager that even though master was the default for so long that the majority of git repositories that have been contributed to in the last 30 days are not 'master' as the default branch name.
To change a default with such inertia as to completely skew the demographic in favour of the new rather than the status quo: I would certainly merit that as success.
By 'twitter brigades trying to smear your name'. Great success!
More news at eight?
He is jewish. Just like the rest of the "yandex talents" that moved to work at Israeli office. They all get to be jewish when if suits them.
UPD.
Also, yandex news was (and still is) the pinnacle of russian putin propaganda. And the person in question was complicit with it. Even, given the fact he wasn't living in russia since 2014. He tries to whitewash himself because he is a sanctioned individual. And the protocol to get desanctioned is to publicly state he disapproves the war.
Where in the world is there any "Russophobia"? The far-right in the West and around the world loves Russia and Russians.
I don't think that's that significant. But it does prove my point.
Israel cares a lot about what happens in Ukraine because it is in a similar position, a highly-militarized vanguard of the West. If Ukraine falls despite backing from Washington, what does that say about possible outcomes should a (full-scale) war break out between Israel and Iran/Arab states?
So this helps us understand Volozh's motivations.