A Russian tech giant mostly owned by western investors is helping websites pushing false claims about the war in Ukraine to make thousands of dollars every day through digital advertising.
Yandex is considered Russia’s equivalent to Google, running both a search engine and an extensive digital advertising business. Its deputy CEO, Tigran Khudaverdyan, resigned this month after the European Union imposed sanctions on him.
The Bureau for Investigative Journalism has discovered Yandex-delivered ads appearing alongside misinformation and propaganda produced by more than half a dozen Russian-language news sites. These attracted more than 420m visits in February, according to SimilarWeb, suggesting these sites could be making tens of millions of dollars annually from digital ads.
Adverts ran alongside false stories about US bioweapons labs in Ukraine, claims that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy is displaying symptoms of drug use, and reports parroting Russian claims that the “special operation” is going entirely to plan. Others detail supposed provocations by Ukraine aimed at Russia’s allies, or refer to the Russian invasion as an “operation to denazify and demilitarise Ukraine”.
Any ad revenue would be channelled through a business owned by some of the world’s largest investment firms, most of which are based in the US.
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