One week ago Russia launched an unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine, the horrifying effects of which continue to escalate with every passing day. While President Putin may be able to stamp out the voices of the Russian people calling for peace, he can ill afford to ignore the voices of the Russian Oligarchy. This class, whose wealth and influence enable Putin’s bloody ambitions, includes amongst its ranks billionaire and US Treasury designated oligarch Arkady Volozh, founder and CEO of Yandex. His silence on the invasion of Ukraine is his complicity in a war that has already killed thousands. 

The University of Arizona is amongst the first in the United States to trial Yandex.Eats autonomous delivery robots for its campus restaurant Grubhub orders.

The problem is that these robots are an extension of a company whose repertoire includes advancing Russia’s strategic artificial intelligence development, granting the Russian government broad board-level influence over the nation’s largest search engine, and most recently according to Reuters “warning Russian users looking for news about Ukraine on its search engine of unreliable information on the internet”. In their obfuscations and censorship, Yandex is actively engaged in the propagandistic deception of ordinary Russian citizens by their state.

While boycotting a food delivery robot may not end the war, we must remember that, against the magnitude of the evil defining this conflict, no act of protest, solidarity, or resistance is too small.

This petition therefore calls on the President of the University of Arizona Dr. Robert C. Robbins to immediately suspend its preliminary endorsement of and relationship with the Yandex Corporation. This petition calls on Dr. Robbins to recognize that the continued income for and advancement of the Yandex Corporations AI algorithms from our university campus stands in direct opposition to the global commitments of our University, not least of which to its Ukrainian staff and student body. Finally, this petition acknowledges the role and reception of delivery robots across campus. It therefore calls on the President to investigate other autonomous delivery robotics companies not intrinsically linked in support to the death and suffering of so many through this war.