RFE/RL's Kyiv correspondent, Christopher Miller, has sent us this report on the Yandex raids:
Ukraine Security Service Searches Yandex Offices In 'Treason' Probe
KYIV -- Ukraine’s security service is searching the Kyiv and Odesa offices of Russian Internet giant Yandex as part of a treason investigation, according to a spokeswoman for the security service, the SBU.
The May 29 searches come less than two weeks after President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree banning Yandex and several other Russian sites, including the popular social networks VK -- formerly VKontakte -- and Odnoklassniki.
"Within the framework of the criminal proceedings on [suspicion of] high treason, searches are being conducted at the mentioned companies in Kyiv and Odesa," the SBU spokesperson Olena Hitlyanska wrote on her Facebook page. Treason is punishable by 12 to 15 years in prison and the confiscation of property.
The website MarketingChallenge cited Yandex's press service as saying in a statement that its lawyers had arrived at the offices but were not given any information about the searches. "Within the legal procedures, we are ready to give the authorities all necessary information," the press service said, according to MarketingChallenge.
According to Ukrainian IT news site AIN.ua, staff of both offices were ordered by the SBU to leave the premises while the searches were conducted.
In signing the decree, which was published on May 16, Poroshenko cited the need to combat what he called Russian instruments of information warfare.
The move, which came at the request of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council and the SBU, added the companies to a long sanctions list, which includes 1,228 individuals and 468 legal entities.
It also sparked a public debate between critics who condemned it as censorship and a blow to freedom of expression and supporters who called it a long-overdue move in defense of national security.
Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014, after sending in troops and staging a referendum widely denounced as illegal.
Moscow has also given strong support to separatists whose war against Kyiv's forces has killed more than 9,900 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.
Here's an item from our news desk:
German, French, Ukrainian, Russian Deputy Foreign Ministers To Meet On May 30
Deputy foreign ministers from Germany, France, Ukraine, and Russia are to meet in Berlin on May 30.
A German government spokesman announced the planned meeting, part of a four-way process known as the Normandy Format, on May 29.
Germany and France have been seeking to help end the war between Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces that has killed more than 9,900 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.
The EU powerhouses brokered a February 2015 cease-fire and peace deal known as Minsk 2, but the conflict persists and progress on political aspects of the pact has been slow.
The purpose of the meeting "is to review the current situation on the ground with regard to the cease-fire and with regard to all other commitments under the Minsk agreements," German government spokesman Martin Schaefer told a regular news conference.
The planned meeting comes a day after talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron at Versailles Palace on May 29.
The EU and United States have imposed sanctions on Russia over its actions in eastern Ukraine, where Kyiv and NATO say Moscow fomented unrest in 2014 and has given strong military backing to separatists who hold parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.