Starting from 1 January 2022 Russian legislation requires foreign IT companies targeting Russian citizens to set up a representative office or a subsidiary in Russia to ensure compliance with local regulation. The new legislation is referred to in mass media as the Law on “landing” foreign IT businesses in Russia.

The companies falling under the criteria described in the new Law, including the daily audience of no less than 500,000 users in Russia, are added to the list maintained by the regulating authority, Roskomnadzor. The list is available on the regulator’s website.

In November 2021 Roskomnadzor arbitrarily included 13 companies in the list, including Apple, Google, Zoom, Meta and Twitter. Among these, as of now, Apple is the only one to comply with any of the new requirements. The company has registered a personal account on Roskomnadzor’s website. Another company on the list, Singaporean social network Likee, has reportedly filed the application to register the account in January.

For more details and the criteria for foreign companies to fall under the requirements of the legislation please refer to our Alert of 30 July 2021.