Russian users can no longer rely on Notion for their projects as the service announced exiting Russia shortly. Notion not only decided to quit services in Russia but also announced terminating workspaces associated with present or past Russian billing.
Notion Exiting Russia In Early September 2024
As announced in a recent post, Notion plans on exiting Russia in September this year. The service decided to discontinue accessibility to Russian users to ensure compliance with US laws restricting the provision of products and services to Russia.
Specifically, this restriction applies to,
- Users in Russia with no existing or past billing associated with Russia. However, such users may regain access to their Notion workspaces outside of the Russian boundaries.
- Notion users with an existing or past billing associated with Russia. Such users will lose access to Notion workspaces for good. The service, besides terminating the workspaces for such users, will also terminate their subscription payments for all plans.
The change will come into effect on September 9, 2024. Russian users or other Notion users in Russia may access their workspaces until September 8, 2024, when they may download all necessary data. After that time period, their Notion workspaces will be terminated.
Notion is a widely used note-taking, project management, and productivity application serving corporate users globally. The sudden disabling of its services for Russian users will undoubtedly have a severe impact on them.
The United States government imposed a ban on selling/exporting software and IT-related services to Russia in the wake of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. According to the US Department of Treasury, this effort aims to disrupt Russia’s military-industrial base’s reliance on foreign IT systems.
Consequently, US-based software and IT services started reconsidering their collaborations and services to Russian users. In June 2024, Docker Hub announced suspending services for Russian users. And now, Notion made a similar announcement to comply with US laws. We may also witness more IT services announcing similar moves in the days to come.
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