[jwe]

As somebody who is also not a Kagi customer because of this the statement of Vlad is exactly "throwing his hands up".

Two quotes from his response: "Any good search engine remains unimpressed by world politics." "We set out to fix search, not the world."

All the technical explanations between these two quotes could have also been used to justify why they are not contributing to Russias economy. But he didn't do that. That is a conscious choice while clearly being aware of the issue.

[Spivak]

They are contributing to Russia's economy so I'm not sure what you hoped he'd say contrary to that. I don't consider someone buying from US businesses to be any kind of implicit support of my government, while at the same time choosing to avoid businesses from a country in the manner desired here is taking a pretty strong political stance.

[jwe]

I agree. He doesn't take that stance and thus I am not a customer and speaking out about it.