Linus Tech Tips Discussion

 Ubiquiti accused of aiding russian agression against Ukraine 3rd party distributor implicated (WAN Show Extra Sources For reference)         Summary Pussy Riot occupied the Manhattan offices of Ubiquiti Friday to protest the tech company’s “role in Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine,” the group said in a statement. There is a lot of nuance to this story and claims have been going back and forth on the substantiation of the claims on both sides. This post is meant to aggregate the sources and possibly provide clarity. As a former ubnt dealer and MSP admin there may be some additional clarity to be gained. It has been speculated that the report originated from a source that attempted to short UI stock and therefore gain from creating a false narrative.      Quotes Quote Several baseline facts matter for context. Ubiquiti products were legally sold in Russia prior to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Broad restrictions on exporting U.S. networking equipment to Russia largely took effect after February 2022, meaning legacy inventory and secondary-market circulation were already in place. Ubiquiti relies heavily on third-party distributors, a model common in the networking industry, and once products leave those distributors, resale and gray-market movement become difficult to track.   My thoughts  Ubiquiti (UI or UBNT) operates mostly on 3rd party resellers and while i completely understand the anger, the sanctions evasion has been massive for the entire history of the conflict. as someone who served and follows this closely it is proven that russian missiles and drones have US and EU technology in them. the photos are out there. it is a game of whack a mole when dealing with 3rd countries and resellers. many of them have been shut down but many more have sprang up. if this is what it seems to be a 3rd party the UI should absolutely cut them off and others in the region suspected of bypassing sanctions. However, deactivating all of the equipment that is not connected to the cloud is a practical impossibility. UI long range dishes operate on UISP which can be hosted locally and given the proficiency of the engineers involved its almost impossible to even confirm. I cannot get into my views without going off topic, so i will simply say: heroyam Slava  i appreciate the balanced approach Linus and Luke took in discussing this.    Sources https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/new-report-slams-ubiquiti-for-products-that-keep-showing-up-on-the-front-lines-of-the-russia-ukraine-war-what-investors-should-know/ar-AA1V7d90 https://hntrbrk.com/ubiquiti/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6i4uffZvhc   https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2026/02/06/spacex-blocks-russias-starl