East-West Digital News

Founded in 2011, East-West Digital News is an online resource dedicated to the Russian high tech industry — providing fresh news, market research and business consulting services. Its news service and publications were suspended in 2022 as a consequence of Russia’s war on Ukraine and the subsequent international isolation.

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Targeted by western sanctions, Sber has to part with key digital assets

May 20, 2022

Just weeks after Yandex sold its news aggregation and online entertainment services, another key player of Russia’s online ecosystem, Sber, has deprived itself from important digital assets.  A company called Novye Vozmozhnosti (New Possibilities) is the new owner of the music service SberZvuk (previously Zvooq.ru, acquired by Sber in Aprill 2021); the video streaming service Okko (aquired …

Targeted by western sanctions, Sber has to part with key digital assets Read More

Russian IT major Lanit pours 3 billion rubles into B2B online store

May 19, 2022

Itogo.ru, an online B2B and B2C seller of electronic goods and home appliances — from smartphones to microwave ovens — has raised 3 billion rubles from Lanit Ventures. This fund, the historic investor of Itogo, is the venture arm of Lanit, a major Russian IT group. By Russian standards, this is a sizeable amount (around …

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How a Ukrainian tech entrepreneur created a startup from a Russian prison

June 3, 2022

Serge Faguet, a Ukraine-born tech entrepreneur who studied at Stanford and co-founded Russian booking service Ostrovok.ru in the early 2010s, made a public confession last week in a Medium post.  In the summer of last year, a Russian customs agent at the Moscow airport found five tabs of acid — in addition to a US-physician-prescribed …

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Huawei, Lenovo, Union Pay, Xiaomi: Russia’s hopes for Chinese relief from western sanctions could be dashed to dust

May 10, 2022

Chinese IT companies are “quietly pulling back from doing business in Russia under pressure from US sanctions and suppliers,” despite calls by Beijing for companies to resist overseas pressure, WSJ reports.   Several major companies are decreasing shipments to Russia, including PC giant Lenovo and smartphone and gadget maker Xiaomi. These two companies have actually stopped deliveries to Russia, even though …

Huawei, Lenovo, Union Pay, Xiaomi: Russia’s hopes for Chinese relief from western sanctions could be dashed to dust Read More

Russian owner of one of the world’s top digital banks says Kremlin forced sale of his stake

May 3, 2022

UK-sanctioned Russian businessman Oleg Tinkov said the Kremlin forced him to sell his stake in a major bank he had founded after he criticized the Ukraine war. Tinkoff Bank, one of Russia’s most impressive success stories in the tech field, has over 20 million customers — making it one of the world’s biggest digital banks. It is …

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Cheap access to top international video platforms available on Russian darknet

April 29, 2022

Ads to access Spotify Premium, Netflix Premium, Pornhub and VPN services are flourishing in Russia — be it on the darkness or on legitimate classifieds platforms such as Avito.  Russian business daily Kommersant found no fewer than 60 ads to access Spotify, most often offering offer to join a foreign family account.  Meanwhile, 57 Spotify account …

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Yandex sells news aggregation service to VK amid censorship law and media crackdown

April 29, 2022

Yandex, the Russian digital giant, announced today “an agreement in principle” to sell its news aggregation service and infotainment platform ‘Zen’ to VK Company. The terms of the considered transaction are not disclosed.  “While the parties have come to an agreement in principle on a transaction, they are continuing to discuss certain technical details, which will be announced …

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Yandex scales back “many planned investments,” withdraws 2022 financial guidance

April 29, 2022

In the instable environment created by Russia’s war on Ukraine, Yandex’s annual report to the US Security Exchange Commission (SEC) provides details on a range of pressing business issues and potential company risks. The report was issued Thursday by Yandex’s Netherlands-headquartered mother company, which has been listed on the Nasdaq since 2011. After the resignation …

Yandex scales back “many planned investments,” withdraws 2022 financial guidance Read More

Reuters: Binance built ties to a Russian FSB-linked agency

April 22, 2022

Just one day after Binance announced it was deactivating the accounts of its major clients in Russia in order to comply with EU sanctions, Reuters reveals how, starting from April 2021, the world’s leading crypto exchange secretly shared client data with the Russian authorities. At the time, Russia’s financial intelligence unit Rosfinmonitoring (Rosfin) was “seeking to trace …

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SAP “supports Ukraine” but has “no magical button” to make Russian software licenses disappear

April 21, 2022

Yesterday SAP announced “further steps” to “support Ukraine” and “plan Russia exit.”  As announced in late March, the global enterprise software giant is in the process of shutting down its cloud services in Russia. As part of this process, “we have given non-sanctioned companies in Russia the choice to have their data deleted, sent to them, or migrated …

SAP “supports Ukraine” but has “no magical button” to make Russian software licenses disappear Read More

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