MOSCOW, May 16. /TASS/. Russian internet company Yandex believes that the sanctions of the Ukrainian authorities will not have an impact on its business and will rather harm Ukrainian users, the company said in a statement.

"Unfortunately, the decision of the Ukrainian authorities concerns not only us. These are sanctions against 11 million Ukrainian users who choose our services every month, and against thousands of Ukrainian organizations that use our technologies and services to develop their businesses. Of course, the business of the Yandex Group of companies is very large, and the sanctions will not have a negative impact on it," the statement said.

The company has been operating in Ukraine since 2005.

"All this time our Ukrainian team has been working in strict accordance with the legislation of Ukraine, puts all its efforts into creating quality products," Yandex notes.

The company believes that sanctions "zero all the long-term efforts" on the local market.

Earlier on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko brought into effect a decision made by the country’s National Security and Defense Council on expanding sanctions on Russia. The sanctions list consists of 1,228 Russian individuals and 468 legal entities. Sanctions have been imposed on several TV channels and companies, including 1C, ABBYY and their Ukrainian subsidiaries. In addition, Russia’s VKontakte and Odnoklassniki social networks, Mail.ru and Yandex companies have been banned.

Vkontakte is the largest and most popular social networking website both in Russia and Ukraine. Odnoklassniki ranks fifth in popularity in these countries. Both websites were founded in 2006 and belong to Mail.Ru Group Russian Internet company.

At the same time, experts believe that these services are very popular in the country and the residents of Ukraine will actively use the ways of bypassing the lock.