That hurt tech stocks. For the past few weeks, the 10-year yield has traded between 1.72% and 2%, as traders moved into the bond for safety when Russia headlines were uglyāand out of it when headlines improved. Now, the yield is touching its pandemic-era high. If the yield breaks above that level, that could signal that itās on a sustainable path higher. Higher long-dated bond yields make future profits less valuableāand many tech companies are valued on the basis of profits forecast for many years in the future. Artem Kliuchnikov and his family fled Ukraine just days before the Russian invasion. The next bit isnāt clear, but Durov reportedly claimed that his resignation, dated March 21st, was an April Foolsā prank. TechCrunch implies that it was a matter of principle, but itās hard to be clear on the wheres, whos and whys. Similarly, on April 17th, the Moscow Times quoted Durov as saying that he quit the company after being pressured to reveal account details about Ukrainians protesting the then-president Viktor Yanukovych. Telegram has become more interventionist over time, and has steadily increased its efforts to shut down these accounts. But this has also meant that the company has also engaged with lawmakers more generally, although it maintains that it doesnāt do so willingly. For instance, in September 2021, Telegram reportedly blocked a chat bot in support of (Putin critic) Alexei Navalny during Russiaās most recent parliamentary elections. Pavel Durov was quoted at the time saying that the company was obliged to follow a ālegitimateā law of the land. He added that as Apple and Google both follow the law, to violate it would give both platforms a reason to boot the messenger from its stores. For Oleksandra Tsekhanovska, head of the Hybrid Warfare Analytical Group at the Kyiv-based Ukraine Crisis Media Center, the effects are both near- and far-reaching.
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