[jacquesm]

Two years + 6 weeks of notice, that would seem to be enough to make a move. This was in the cards for a long time and I noted in the first weeks of the war that anybody from Russia with assets in the West would be smart to move them because sooner or later they'd be at risk. Note that the real artery isn't hosting but DNS and if there are more similar actions at registrars or even at ICANN (see the 'NameCheap' thread) then that will have as much or more impact. Hosting is usually manageable (unless you are tied into hosting provider unique services, such as AWS).

[throwaway4good]

Is the two years referring to the start of the Ukraine war?

Or did Hetzner announce their termination of Russian customers back in 2021?

[jacquesm]

Yes. Because it was quite clear that there would be consequences. I think the consensus at the time was that you should get moving if you might be affected, and I also think that the consensus was that by now the war would be over one way or the other. But that hasn't happened and authorities have been coming down ever harder on companies that are still doing business with Russia, Hetzner likely has made an internal re-evaluation of what their exposure is and the legal department has flagged a number of accounts as problematic. This is the kind of thing that got people get jailed for so it isn't surprising that they take it serious. Frankly I'm a bit surprised it took them this long, they should have reacted earlier but with a longer grace period.

This is the sort of thing that keeps Hetzner execs up at night and scared of 4am knocks on their doors:

https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/geschaeftsf...

Similar actions all over Europe with the intensity increasing in the last six months. Most of these are about dual use tech and outright sanction busting but hosting doesn't necessarily get a free pass and I figure Hetzner execs are not brave enough to figure out if theirs is the finest line to be drawn around this.

[throwaway4good]

As far as I know most cloud services of US big tech is still functioning in Russia. Including YouTube, Gmail, advertising services etc. Facebook was blocked the Russian government not Facebook itself.

My guess is that the US authorities appreciate the data they can gather from these sources.

[the_mitsuhiko]

Which US hosting provider sells cloud infrastructure to Russian customers?

[jacquesm]

AWS for instance. You can't open a new account but the pre-existing ones are afaik still serviced. That may not last though.

[MikusR]

But you can't pay for them without workarounds.

[vbezhenar]

SWIFT works in Russia (for selected banks), AFAIK.

[jacquesm]

That's exactly my reading.