By Emmanuel Nduka
Russian billionaire and co-founder of tech giant Yandex, Arkady Volozh, has formally requested that the European Union (EU) lift sanctions against him.
According to analysts, this is the first big test of whether the EU will reward prominent figures who publicly break with the Kremlin.
Sources familiar with the move say Volozh’s lawyers have petitioned the EU to repeal the measures days after the billionaire condemned President Vladimir Putin’s ‘barbaric’ invasion of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the request will be discussed by EU officials in September.
Volozh’s request comes after he became only the second prominent Russian billionaire to unreservedly denounce the war in Ukraine earlier this month, prompting calls from diplomats, officials and other sanctioned individuals for the EU to respond.
59-year-old Volozh has lived in Israel since 2014 and has not returned to Russia since Putin ordered the invasion in February last year. He resigned as chief executive of Yandex, Russia’s answer to Google, and surrendered his voting rights after the EU sanctioned him last year for what it described as Yandex’s complicity in the war.
Although Volozh, like many others in Russia’s elite, was horrified by the war from the outset, he refrained from speaking out against it until earlier this month after drafting and scrapping several other similar statements
Volozh has been criticised by anti-war Russians who said he was insufficiently penitent about Yandex’s role in spreading Kremlin propaganda through its online news platforms. Yandex sold them to state-owned VK last year.
EU sanctions relating to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are reimposed every six months. Volozh hopes he can convince the EU not to renew the sanctions against him when they expire on September 15, according to people close to him. EU sanctions can be lifted in accordance with court rulings or if member states agree that there is “convincing evidence” that the person or entity “no longer fulfils the listing criteria”, a spokesman for the European Commission said.
