After the US followed his advice Navalny even tweeted that he was packing his bags for jail because "someone was going to have to pay for [those sanctions]".
Russia in 2012 passed a law allowing censorship of 'pirate websites' and has been heavily abused. Vk has been making licensing deals with Sony and other labels. Pavel is a Libertarian and is against making the website 'corporate' (like facebook, motivated by money not freedom).
Both the Ukraine, arguments with shareholders and copyright pressure are recent. Putting them together he probably saw a restricted future with VK and now he has Telegram to fallback on, he now sees it an opportunity to quit.
However, Telegram has stated it will never charge or have ads, so my theory is he will be making more websites in the future, hopefully he will make websites which embrace his Libertarian ideals.
Also, just to be clear, I wasn't arguing that the Ukraine conflict caused his departure. Just that it was at least a contributing factor and at worst the straw that broke the camel's back.
https://technology.ihs.com/440359/russia-introduces-first-on...
It's been in the talks since 2012, not passed until 2013. In 2012 they passed a law criminalizing viewing images of child exploitation, this was a big sign of things to come (previously to this law they were very free to do anything on the internet). I think it was also 2012 when the ROMS license was discontinued (making websites like AllofMp3, legalsounds.com illegal in Russia).
Roskomnadzor has used this new legislation to censor any website it wants to, drug, copyright, defamation, they'll find any excuse.
Here is a good article summarizing Vkontakte's recent copyright events: https://torrentfreak.com/russias-facebook-prepares-to-make-p...
They will be killing entire ecosystems of websites using Vk (video, image and audio), Pavel is against this but will get raided or censored for not complying.
It's been going downhill quickly for the past 2 years and shows my signs of slowing down.
What I'm seeing here from Latin America is that very few people think these supposed sactions will have any impact. There are articles circulating in the media that it might actually be would for LA and Russia relationship.
As for the lack of real impact; you're probably right. Most of the targeted officials assets are in Europe, not the US, and Europe's list was much weaker.