Major international tech firms are leaving the Russian market after the latest round of tech sanctions came into effect on September 12, The Bell reports.

Sanctions targeting Russia’s IT sector, adopted in June, have come into force, aiming to restrict the country’s military-industrial complex from accessing enterprise software for management, design, and production, however, civil use for things like emails has been exempted.

While large international software providers had already withdrawn from Russia long before these sanctions, the new measures are affecting smaller IT developers and their clients—namely startups, small businesses, and individual users.

The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) clarified that American companies are now prohibited from offering IT consulting, design services, support, and cloud services related to enterprise management and manufacturing software to any person in Russia. However, exceptions were made for services related to internet communication, such as email, social networks, and messaging platforms, as part of a policy of not punishing the Russian people for “Putin’s war.”

Despite these exemptions, the sanctions’ vague wording has caused confusion for many IT firms. As a result, even companies whose products do not directly relate to military uses have chosen to pull out of the Russian market.

For example, website builders Wix and Ecwid have decided to leave Russia, affecting around 2,500 small and medium-sized businesses that rely on their services. San Francisco-based project management tool Notion also announced it would disable accounts of Russian users, including those with previous ties to Russia. Coda, a similar service, and ClickUp, another project management platform, have followed suit, with both companies informing users that their services would no longer be available in Russia due to sanctions.

Other tech firms with Russian roots are also making their exits. Miro, a cloud collaboration platform founded in Perm but now headquartered in the US, initially planned to block Russian users but later backtracked, allowing continued access for free users. AI service Recraft, founded by former Yandex executive Anna Veronika Dorogush, also limited access to Russian users, citing compliance with sanctions.

Major companies like Google have introduced more targeted restrictions. The tech giant disabled its BigQuery service for the Russian market and shut down Google AdSense, as well as access to Looker Studio, a data visualisation tool. While the full shutdown of services was avoided, these moves have disrupted many businesses and individuals in Russia.

Hubspot, a US-based marketing software provider, has similarly ceased operations in Russia, and Slack began suspending Russian user accounts as early as June, following the introduction of sanctions. Microsoft has also begun disabling cloud subscriptions for certain Russian companies, though individual users have not been impacted.

“The biggest problem is overcompliance, when even those companies that are not subject to restrictions decide not to work in the sanctioned market just in case,” Sarkis Darbinyan, a lawyer and human rights activist told The Bell.

Companies fear potential penalties ranging from fines to being added to the list of entities with restricted access to US goods and technologies. This, combined with the risk of losing sales in other markets, has pushed many firms to leave Russia.

While these sanctions are intended to target Russia’s military-industrial complex, their impact is being felt across the broader economy. The departure of services like Miro and Recraft is a significant blow to Russia’s tech sector. Despite the emergence of domestic alternatives, experts argue that it will be years before they can fully replace the functionality of these international platforms.

The broader implications of the sanctions are still uncertain. While some companies may quietly leave the Russian market in the coming months, larger tech firms like Google are expected to maintain a more measured approach. Disabling all of Google’s services would bring complete chaos not only to Russian companies but to society as a whole, say experts.