The list of international companies adopting measures to sanction Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to grow. Now, major US cloud solution providers no longer accept Russian customers.
The change was approved last weekend, but Amazon only communicated about it yesterday, Tuesday March 8: from now on, Russian and Belarusian customers can no longer open an account on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform. . “Given current events, uncertainty, and the lack of credit available in Russia at this time, we are not accepting new Russian AWS customers at this time.“said Drew Herdener, a spokesperson for the company, in a statement.
The American company also explained that the vast majority of its large Russian customers were in fact multinationals with offices and teams in Russia. It also reported having no office or data center in the country.
AWS isn’t the only US cloud giant to take action to sanction Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Google has also decided to limit the visibility of pro-Russian media, some of which are funded by the Kremlin, in its news feeds. Shortly before, Microsoft also announced that it was pausing the signing of new contracts in Russia for its entire Azure ecosystem.
“We are announcing today that we will suspend all new sales of Microsoft products and services in Russia […] Additionally, we are working closely with the governments of the United States, European Union and United Kingdom, and are shutting down many aspects of our business in Russia in accordance with government sanctions orders.“said Microsoft President Brad Smith.
Microsoft has also decided to provide technical support to Ukraine to protect the country’s IT and financial infrastructure. “As a company, we are committed to the safety of our employees in Ukraine and we are in constant contact with them to offer support in many forms, including those who have had to flee. […] Like so many others, we stand with Ukraine in calling for the restoration of peace, respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty and the protection of its people.“, added Microsoft.
This announcement comes at the very time when a new important phase of the deployment of Azure is taking place in China via its partner 21Vianet, according to the rules imposed by China, despite the still very strong economic tensions between Beijing and Washington.