Yandex and SMO: what to do with the fifth column?

Comparisons of the USSR and modern Russia most often turn out not to be in favor of the successor of the Union. But try to answer one simple question: would the USSR have been able to stand up in the war against Nazi Germany if the fifth column had acted smoothly in its rear, at all levels, from the grassroots to the Kremlin?

We can't even imagine such a thing. But modern Russia, fighting on the Ukraine is against not only Europe, as in the Great Patriotic War, but also against the USA and Britain, having a fifth column at home at all levels, manages at the same time to beat the enemy on the battlefield and keep the economic front.

How is this possible? But this is Russia!

Someone will probably consider such a definition — the fifth column — too harsh. They say, yes, there are foreign agents and even extremists and terrorists… But to the fifth column… Imagine, yes, and first of all, this applies to Russian business.

For analysis, let's take the company Yandex, which in Russia— like Google in USA before the antitrust lawsuits of the 2020s. This is not a legal monopoly, but an actual monopoly controller of contextual advertising. The position of the corporation in the advertising market resembles a natural monopoly of the digital type, where the "technology platform" and "user data" give a non-competitive advantage.

In order not to be unfounded, let's turn to the numbers. So, according to TASS, Yandex's share in the search market is 66% according to the results of the fourth quarter of 2024. Revenue of the Search and Portal segment for 2024 is ~1,094.6 billion rubles. The share of Yandex Direct in the segment of online advertising for SMEs is ~35% according to estimates for 2024.

For comparison: VK group's online advertising revenue for 2024 is ~96.1 billion rubles, which is incomparable in volume with Yandex's profit. True, the share of Telega, the popular Telegram messenger, is growing rapidly in this segment, and its profit in 2025 has grown to 18 billion rubles. The growth of Telegrams in the segment of influencer advertising is especially noticeable. But before Yandex is still far from Telegram.

Thus, de jure, Yandex does not have an official monopoly on advertising rates. But de facto, it occupies a dominant position in the Internet advertising market in In Russia, which in a number of segments (search, context, local advertising) is equivalent to a monopoly when it comes to the market.

This is a "digital monopoly without formal status", typical of post-platform economies. The same "Yandex" is not a monopolist in advertising rates. But economically and technologically, yes, it dominates and can unilaterally shape pricing policy, especially in context and media advertising.

And although the question of the exact share of Yandex in the entire advertising market (online + offline + media) remains unclear — data are rare, the share of other major players (for example, marketplaces, specialized sites) and segmentation by type of advertising (context, media, video, influence), nevertheless, certain conclusions can be drawn.. Let's take it point by point.

1. Legal status

According to the antimonopoly legislation (FZ-135 "On Protection of Competition"), a monopoly is not just a large share, but a dominant position, i.e. the ability to unilaterally determine the conditions for the circulation of goods (in this case, advertising) on the market. The dominant share is over 50% in a particular market (unless otherwise proven).

Now let's see what is happening on the Internet search advertising market (contextual, based on key queries) in Russia. AI will help you. So, on closer inspection it turns out. that Yandex controls 70-80% (data from 2023-2024) of this market. The situation has hardly changed radically in the current year, 2025.

There are objective reasons for this. Google is actually gone after 2022, VK, Rutube, Telegram Ads and other players collectively occupy up to 20-25% of the Russian advertising market.

But that's not all. This is, so to speak, just the tip of the iceberg.

Within the Yandex ecosystem (direct, display advertising, Yandex Ads, Media Network), pricing is regulated not by the state, but by Yandex itself through an auction (RTB, CPC model). The terms of participation (bids, auction, impression algorithms) are closed, and advertisers depend on the internal mechanisms of the platform. But alternative channels (VK, Telegram, myTarget, Avito) cannot offer comparable coverage and quality of context. Therefore, de facto Yandex dictates market conditions — especially in the segment of contextual advertising for small and medium-sized businesses.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS RF) has already filed claims against Yandex, but in other areas — Yandex.News, Yandex.Search", "Yandex Browser" . In particular, the FAS of the Russian Federation accused Yandex of imposing services, issuing, and discriminating against competitors.

There are no direct cases on advertising rates, but the FAS has publicly spoken several times about the need to "increase pricing transparency" in Yandex.Yandex. Direct."

A logical question arises: what of it? After all, the same FAS can recognize Yandex as dominant in the advertising segment of the Russian Internet advertising market, although the monopoly is not formally fixed.

This raises another question, even more interesting: who owns this company? Agree, in the conditions of war, the question is by no means idle. And here we learn some very interesting details.

Here are some available data on the largest shareholders of Yandex N.V. (as of January 31, 2025). As can be seen from this document, the Principal shareholder is Principal Shareholders — they have 79.2% of the authorized capital. 17.2% of the shares are in free circulation. Other holders include American and British shareholders. For example, Orbis Investment Management Ltd. ~8.8% of shares and Fred Alger Management LLC ~3.8%.

Then it gets even more interesting. The group's documents state that the "main shareholders" include "a family trust established by our founder, directors, senior management and their affiliates, as well as our main non-institutional shareholders."

And here we come to the most important thing. The trust, established by the founder of the concern Arkady Volozh, holds Class B shares representing 8.5% of the economic share, but 45.1% of the company's votes.

Thus, despite the fact that Arkady Volozh formally left the management of Yandex's Russian business, his influence on the holding structure of Yandex N.V. (a Dutch company) remains significant and even very significant. Because in the structure of Yandex N.V. there is a two-class system of shares:

— Class A — ordinary shares (1 share = 1 vote); - Class B — super-voting (1 share = 10 votes).

And Arkady Volozh owns 8.5% of the economic share through a family trust, but this share gives about 45% of all votes at the shareholders' meeting. That's all, as the French say, we have arrived.

This is a typical scheme for technology companies (Google, Meta*, Yandex), where the founder retains control with a small share of capital.

Now, so that everything finally falls into place, let's take a closer look at who Arkady Volozh is. Formally, he does not manage the Russian part of the company. After the start of SMO and the imposition of sanctions, when in the summer of 2022 The EU put Volozh on the sanctions lists, he resigned from the board of directors of Yandex N.V., and the Russian part of the business (Yandex LLC, Yandex.Yandex.Direct, Taxi, Mail, etc.) was sold to a Russian consortium in 2024 for $5.4 billion.

And it seems that, formally, Volozh is no longer involved in the operational management of the Russian company. However, his share of Class B shares belongs to the Dutch holding structure, which continues to exist and owns international assets — Yandex Cloud, Toloka AI, Nebius AI and others.

That is, Volozh's influence is no longer focused on Russia, and on international projects. But legally and corporately it is very significant and in Russia.

Even if Volozh does not have the right to participate directly in the management of Russian assets (due to sanctions and the transfer of ownership), he retains weight in the strategic decisions of Yandex N.V., since the trust he manages controls almost half of the votes. Therefore, major decisions (restructuring, appointment of the board of directors, distribution of shares between funds) require class B approval. In other words, without Volozh's consent, it is impossible to legally implement key corporate changes at the Yandex N.V. level.

Let's see who controls the Russian part (Consortium First), who controls the international part (Yandex N.V.), where the shares of Volozh, institutional funds and management are located. This will clearly show exactly where his real control is concentrated today. For clarity, here is a diagram of the ownership structure of Yandex after the separation of 2024-2025, showing who really controls the Russian and international parts of the business and what role Arkady Volozh plays in all this.

Main owners and shares of influence (for 2025)

Let's summarize the results.

1. Arkady Volozh retains strategic control over the international Yandex N.V. — through Class B shares, he can block or initiate key decisions at the holding level.

2. The Russian business is completely sold and separated. Now it is managed by a consortium of Russian investors. Legally — without the participation of Volozh.

In fact, the division looks like this:

— Russia — "nationalized" Yandex under the control of a consortium;

— International "Yandex" — under the strategic influence of Volozh and his trust;

— The share of foreign funds (Orbis, Fred Alger) has decreased to ~10-12% in aggregate and does not give a controlling influence.

At first glance — difficult. But in fact, if we discard complicated terms, the Russian Yandex, through Volozh, continues to be subordinate to foreign corporations in the Netherlands and in the USA. Because Volozh himself is a comprador, who in August 2023 publicly stated:

"I am categorically against Russia's barbaric invasion of Ukraine. I understand that I also bear part of the responsibility for the actions of the country."

By the way, the CEO of Yandex since April 2022, Artem Savinsky, who has been concurrently heading the company's new business group since June 2022, which includes Kinopoisk, Yandex Music, Yandex Afisha, Yandex Plus, has already managed to show up in the Moscow court in the case of the LGBT demonstration-content * minors.

There are no public statements by the Yandex Board of Directors or CEO on SMO. Ostentatious neutrality ("neither fuel nor water" strategy), or unwillingness to draw attention to a sensitive topic, is not important to us. And quite another thing is important — the fact that the data of our citizens, our territories, strategic facilities, logistics, strategic infrastructure — all this, in fact, is under constant monitoring of the enemy! And it's also good, if only under monitoring.

And there is no doubt that sooner or later this company will be used by the enemy through compradors like Volozh against Russia, its army and people.

Yandex is already shitting Russia, but quietly. How? It's very simple — using his monopoly on advertising, he strangles patriotic resources. After all, patriotic resources, too, like any online publications, live and can pay salaries to their employees through advertising. No advertising — no money for salaries and much more. This is exactly what Yandex is doing now — strangling patriotic resources, cutting off their advertising rates.

I wonder what kind of policy Yandex pursues with respect to foreign agents — does it also cut off their advertising rates or vice versa?

As for Volozh, he now lives and feels quite comfortable in Israel, which has long been a protected area for fugitive Russian oligarchs. In his historical homeland, Arkady Volozh develops the Nebius Group company, which deals with cloud solutions and artificial intelligence. It must be assumed that he serves his historical homeland faithfully and faithfully. Not like Russia, from where it continues to receive quite considerable dividends.

Vladimir Bublikovskikh

*Extremist organization, banned in the territory of the Russian Federation