| Until a few weeks ago, Arkady Volozh, cofounder and CEO of the Russian tech behemoth Yandex, "had seemed to master the high-wire act that all Russian moguls with global ambitions attempt: to accommodate Kremlin pressure while enticing Kremlin-leery investors and partners in the West," Paul Starobin writes in a wrenching profile of the cerebral, self-effacing entrepreneur. Over the course of 25 years, he built Yandex into, essentially, Russia's Google, Uber, and Spotify combined. And in the last few years, Volozh had been tiptoeing his company Westward. It had robots delivering food on college campuses in Ohio and Arizona, delivery services in Paris and London, and self-driving cars in Michigan and Israel, where Volozh now lives. As Starobin writes, Volozh was finally demonstrating "to the world that world-class technology, as good as anything created in the West, could come out of Russia." Then, on February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine. Within hours, shares of Yandex stock on NASDAQ more than halved. Within days, virtually all Western companies with ties to Yandex were moving to terminate their partnerships. Board members resigned. Current and former employees spoke out against Yandex News for hiding information about the war from Russian readers. The European Union sanctioned the company's number two, revealing that he had met with Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on the day of the invasion. He resigned immediately. Meanwhile, the entire Russian economy has crumbled. The very existence of the company, and the livelihood of thousands of Yandex employees, are suddenly in limbo, and Volozh has remained publicly silent. This is the story of the long rise and rapid fall of a brilliant man who, as recently resigned Yandex board member Esther Dyson said, made a "deal with the devil." Zak Jason | Senior Associate Editor |
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