RBC: Russian companies began to fire Ukrainian IT specialists

Russian companies have begun to fire or demote IT specialists of Ukrainian origin. This was told to RBC by two market participants and confirmed by the head of ANO Information Culture Ivan Begtin.

Such an unspoken demand comes from the state customers of these companies, suggests Begtin. About which companies in question, the interlocutors of RBC did not specify.

According to the publication, cases of similar dismissals were also discussed on the sidelines of the Russian Internet Forum, which was held on May 18-20. According to one of the participants of the event, Ukrainian IT specialists are being fired “for fear of sabotage”.

RBC's source in the cybersecurity market said that the internal security services of Russian companies "keep a close eye on employees who themselves or their relatives are citizens of Ukraine", recommend not working with such specialists, or "take them on a pencil." First of all, according to him, it concerns employees with access to data, critical for business, and infrastructure segments.

Begtin, in an interview with the publication, said that there were not so many Ukrainian IT specialists in Russia: most often they worked on outsourcing or “for offshore programmers”, after they actively began to move to Ukraine after 2014.

“The current situation is rather contradictory. On the one hand, there is a shortage of IT specialists in Russia, on the other hand, there are risks in the form of sabotage that is already taking place in companies. In addition, the issue is not only citizenship - there are a number of criteria that can affect potential sabotage within the company: the work of foreign intelligence services, the issue of the employee’s political beliefs, the presence of relatives in Ukraine, ”he said.

Representatives of Yandex, MTS, Ozon, Sberbank and Russian Post told RBC that they do not make personnel decisions based on the nationality of their employees. Positive Technologies reported that there are no Ukrainian employees in the company. Other large IT companies did not respond to a request from journalists.

• At the end of March, the head of the Russian Association for Electronic Communications, Sergey Plugotarenko , stated that 50-70 thousand IT specialists left the Russian Federation. He also predicted that another 70,000-100,000 people could leave as part of the second wave.
• In April, Kommersant, citing market participants , reported that the shortage of IT specialists that arose in Russia after the start of the war in Ukraine could be replaced by their overabundance. According to the interlocutors of the newspaper, specialists who left the country may begin to return, as they "left in a hurry and without preparation."
• The Russian authorities exempted IT companies from taxes for three years, and their employees were promised a deferment from the army and the opportunity to get a preferential mortgage.