The social network "VKontakte" liquidates the headquarters in Kiev

The leadership of the Russian social network VKontakte has decided to close the company's office in Kiev, VC reports . The exact number of laid-off workers is not yet known. Some of the Kiev office specialists will be able to move to work in Moscow - the employers kindly provided them with this opportunity.



Official confirmation of this information from the social network has not yet been received.



VKontakte opened a representative office in Ukraine in early 2012. The main task of the Kiev office was “to ensure that Ukrainian users and partners perceive VKontakte as their own (home) social network.”



VKontakte has become the most popular social network among Ukrainians. According to Liveinternet from May 16, 2017, the social network set a record, reaching 18 million unique visitors in Ukraine per day.



Representatives of the Mail.Ru Group (owns the VKontakte social network) urged users to bypass the blocking with the help of “special Internet resources”. At the same time, the holding stressed that they had never participated in politics and did not violate the laws of Ukraine.



In "VKontakte" Ukrainian users also sent out instructions for circumventing locks. Officially, these guides helped "not to lose their contacts and important information."



Another company from the sanctions list, Yandex, got into a more complicated situation. Yesterday, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) came with a search to the Ukrainian offices of Yandex. "As part of the criminal proceedings for high treason, searches are conducted in companies in Kiev and Odessa," - said the speaker of the SBU Elena Gitlyanskaya.



Law enforcement officials believe that the company's management illegally collected, saved and transferred to Russia personal data of Ukrainian citizens: occupation, lifestyle, home, residence, work, leisure, sources and amounts of income, phone numbers, email addresses and accounts in social networks. According to the SBU, the information was transmitted to the special services of the Russian Federation.



Employees of Yandex did not transfer personal information about Ukrainian users to Russian special services, the company said , commenting on the searches conducted on Monday by the special services of Ukraine:

Neither the employees of Yandex. Ukraine, nor the management of the Ukrainian division had access to personal data of Yandex users. Protecting the personal data of our users in all countries where we provide services is of the highest priority. To ensure this, user data is impersonal and anonymous.



There are strict legal procedures by which law enforcement agencies may apply to the company with the requirement to disclose certain data - but this should be a relevant court decision, and the company itself should consider it reasonable.



Now we are consulting with lawyers and we will take the necessary legal actions to protect our team - for us this is now the most important priority.

On May 16, the Ukrainian authorities imposed sanctions against Russian Internet companies Yandex and Mail.ru Group (including against its social networks Odnoklassniki and VKontakte). In addition to the resources of the listed companies, the sites of such companies as Kaspersky Lab and DrWeb, as well as the 1C representative office in Ukraine, came under sanctions. Probably, the products of these companies, anti-virus software and a number of other services will also fall under the sanctions.