A Russian tech billionaire, Arkady Volozh, has officially requested the lifting of sanctions after denouncing Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian oligarch demanded that the EU ease its sanctions against him after denouncing Putin’s war.
Days after calling the battle “barbaric,” Arkady Volozh made the call, according to the Financial Times.
The tech billionaire was subjected to sanctions last June after criticising Putin’s offensive 18 months after Russia’s invasion, according to The Financial Times, which revealed that Volozh’s attorneys had asked the European Union to lift the restrictions.
Just days after publicly calling the invasion and ongoing battle “barbaric,” Volozh’s attorneys filed the plea, according to the Financial Times, adding that he was personally shocked by the bombing of Ukrainian houses.
“There were reasons to stay silent during this long process,” Volozh told the BBC in a statement.
“While there will anyway be questions about the timing of my statement today, there should be no questions about its essence. I am against the war.”
Yandex, Russia’s version of Google, was co-founded by Volozh, who also served as its first CEO. In June of last year, not long after being punished, he quit his job.
He referred to the decision to penalise him as “misguided and ultimately counterproductive” in a statement posted on Yandex’s website.
The EU cited Volozh’s leadership in fields that gave Russia a “substantial source of revenue” as rationale for the sanctions.
Europe also charged Yandex with de-ranking and censoring content critical of the Kremlin and its conflict while favouring state media and narratives in its search results.
Since the sanctions were put in place, protestors began squatting at Volozh’s five-story property in Amsterdam. A judge decided in November that the squatters did not need to be removed from the property.
