Companies affected by the war in Ukraine
Rakuten
Viber is a smartphone app that lets you make free calls to other Viber users.
97 percent of Ukrainian smartphone owners use the app.
Rakuten bought the company in 2014
Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, asked Rakuten to block Viber service in Russia in a letter posted on Twitter, (he made the same request to Facebook)
Do you think Rakuten should do this?
What do you think Rakuten did?
Hiroshi Mikitani changed his Twitter picture to the Ukraine flag
He personally donated 1 billion yen (($8.7 million) to Ukraine’s government for aid.
Viber will remove ads from the app in Ukraine and Russia so they can’t make a profit during the war
Elon Musk
Starlink is a Satellite Network being built by SpaceX to one day provide low-cost high-speed internet globally.
They’ve launched over 1000 satellites so far (their goal is 12,000)
The system shoots lasers that contain data
In reality it’s not as fast as Musk promised so far (much slower than 4G at 87.25 Mbps). It is by far the fastest satellite internet provider
The price is $500 for the terminal and $99 per month
Do you think the business will be successful?
Who is the target?
As of January 2022, Starlink has 145,000 users in 25 countries
Feb 26th: Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister tweeted Elon Musk:
“while you try to colonize Mars — Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space — Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations”
What do you think Elon Musk did?
A few hours later Musk tweeted:
“Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route.”
Poland have refused to play Russia
Toyota
One of Toyota’s suppliers was hacked so production stopped for a couple of days.
The rumour is Russian hackers committed the cyber attack.
Why do you think Russia wanted hack a Japanese company?
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Japan has:
suspended issuing visas and frozen assets of people connected to the Russian government
banned (some) Russian banks from the SWIFT banking system (the biggest bank is still allowed to operate)
banned exports of semiconductors and other high-tech products to Russia
Before this, Japan spent years trying to build a good relationship with Russia. Do you agree with Japan’s policy?
note; In 2020, 8.2 percent of Japan’s LNG imports and 14.5 percent of coal imports came from Russia