Last week Taiwan imposed a ban on the sale of modern chips to Russia and Belarus in response to the invasion of Ukraine. The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) published a list of strategic high-tech goods that are barred from export to Russia and Belarus, reported DigiTimes. The ministry stated exports of these high-tech commodities are …
Taiwan bans exports of all modern chips to Russia, Belarus Read More
Arkady Volozh, the founder and CEO of Yandex, has resigned from his company after being included in the EU’s latest package of sanctions on June 3, in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The EU points out Yandex’s responsibility in “promoting state media and narratives in its search results, and deranking and removing content critical of the Kremlin, …
Yet another Yandex woe: company founder and CEO resigns after falling under EU sanctions Read More
Russian e-commerce major Ozon plans to reach operational break-even in the next 12 months, the company’s finance chief Igor Gerasimov said on Tuesday. “We’ve started to improve the economy – you can see that in the first quarter of this year (…) In the next 12 months, we intend to reach operational break-even,” he said at the forum of entrepreneurs …
Weeks before tanks and soldiers marched on the cities of Ukraine, Russia carried out a series of successful cyberattacks against Ukraine, hitting critical infrastructure and financial institutions around the country with at least six unique strains of destructive wiper malware. Recent reporting confirms Russia’s GRU also carried out a massive cyberattack against Viasat, knocking its customers’ KA-SAT satellite …
Russian writer and artist Pavel Pepperstein and generative neural network ruGPT-3 have co-authored a story book called Trying to Wake Up. The book has just been published in Moscow by independent publisher Individuum. Trying to Wake Up is touted as “the world’s first collection of short stories resulting from the collaboration of a writer and a neural …
Russian writer and neural network team up to compose 24 short stories Read More
The decision of Visa and MasterCard in early March — followed by Chinese UnionCard — to back away from Russia has affected dozens of millions of card holders from this country. While Russia managed to keep their cards active for domestic transactions at least until they expire, Visa and MasterCard cards can no longer use …
How Russia pushes MIR card adoption in new countries Read More
In 2021 inDriver, a ride-hailing app founded in Yakutsk, Siberia, back in 2012, announced it had achieved unicorn status. Its valuation reached $1.23 billion, following a funding round of $150 million earlier that year. This startup seemed set to continue its rollout into new locations around the world, including plans to expand into Australia. In …
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
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 …
Russian IT major Lanit pours 3 billion rubles into B2B online store Read More
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many cybersecurity experts and activists have joined the Ukrainian cyber front. They carry out DDoS attacks on Russian resources, defacing Russian sites, taking their popular services offline, and even more drastic operations. One of the coordinators of such IT armies is Kharkiv cybersecurity specialist Mykyta Knysh. Having worked …
How Ukrainian “Inglorious Basterds” are combating Russia on the cyber front Read More
Google Russia has moved the better part of its employees out of Russia, reports Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter. These Russian employees “continue to work for Google outside Russia, with a large number ending up in Dubai, where Google has a big office.” Those who opted to stay in Russia will …
Google Russia evacuates staff, prepares bankruptcy procedure Read More
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 …
How a Ukrainian tech entrepreneur created a startup from a Russian prison Read More
