Netflix completes withdrawal from Russia amid war in Ukraine, Russian subscribers lost access to streaming giant

Russian subscribers lost access to streaming giant Netflix in the latest withdrawal of a Western company because of the conflict in Ukraine.

Netflix’s site and apps had been unavailable since Friday and a Netflix spokesperson confirmed that subscribers no longer have access to them.

“This is the fulfillment of the withdrawal from the Russian market” announced in March, a Netflix spokesperson told AFP on Monday.

The US-based platform announced in early March that it was pulling out of Russia after Moscow sent thousands of troops to pro-Western Ukraine.

The spokesperson said the company waited until the end of the current billing cycle before cutting off customers.

Netflix is ​​the world’s leading streaming platform, with 221.8 million subscribers at the end of 2021, but was a minor player in Russia.

The company said in an April letter to shareholders that it lost 7,00,000 paying subscribers following its withdrawal from Russia, blaming the withdrawal for its first global subscriber decline in a decade.

Netflix is ​​among a host of foreign companies that have announced Russia’s suspension of operations or outright withdrawal since the launch of Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine on Feb. 24.

In March, Netflix and TikTok suspended most of their services in Russia as the government cracked down on what people and the media could say about Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Unplugging online entertainment – ​​and news – is likely to further isolate the country and its people after a growing number of multinational corporations have cut off Russia from vital financial services, technologies and a variety of products consumption in response to Western economic sanctions. and global outrage over the invasion of Ukraine.

US credit card companies Visa, Mastercard and American Express all said during the first weekend in March that they would cut service in Russia. South Korea’s Samsung, a leading supplier of smartphones and computer chips, said it would halt product shipments to the country, joining other big tech companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Intel and Dell. .

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