Tensions over the war in Ukraine within American software engineering company EPAM Systems, which has a large workforce split over the frontline, have spilled into the public.Maxsym Chernikov hit “Send.” The email demanding that his employer, EPAM Systems, an S&P 500 outsourcing company with a large workforce in Ukraine, denounce Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine landed in over 58,000 inboxes.
“This was a kind of blackmail with specific demands including supporting the [Ukrainian] military with cyber attacks ,“ says Dobkin, adding that Chernikov has been suspended. “If he had sent this to me I would have told him that this was impossible and was putting our employees around the world in danger.”
Belarus, which has been dubbed Europe’s last dictatorship, led a brutal crackdown against pro-democracy protests last year, and now imposes prison sentences of up to seven years for just following opposition accounts on the. “Arkadiy’s from Belarus and he has an intimate background of how things happen there,” says a senior EPAM staffer who asked not to be named.