Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk has made his position on Russia's invasion of Ukraine very clear. He has offered his support to Ukraine and backed that up with SpaceX Starlink Satellite Internet and Tesla Powerwall solar power batteries.
He has made those moves while also showing compassion for the Russian people,
Musk may be getting the most attention for challenging Vladimir Putin to some sort of mortal combat with Ukraine in the balance -- an idea which may have been the plot of an 80s direct-to-VHS movie -- but he's also lending his voice to the Ukrainian cause. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO may come off as (and see himself) as some sort of mix between James Bond and a James Bond villain, but he has been very vocal in his support for Ukraine while also making meaningful donations.
Musk, one of the three billionaires trying to conquer space along with Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos, and Virgin/Virgin Galactic (SPCE) founder Richard Branson, rarely sees eye-to-eye with his two rivals. In this case, Branson has spoken up as well while Bezos has remained oddly silent.
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Richard Branson Speaks Up for Ukraine
Branson, like Musk, can be a bit eccentric and ostentatious. This is, of course, a man who once flew a UFO over London while dressed as an extraterrestrial. But, while Branson can be brash and has his own Bond villain tendencies, he has not hesitated to speak up on behalf of the people of Ukraine.
Both Tesla and Branson's various Virgin brands may not do much business in Russia, but publicly siding against Putin likely closes that door forever. And while Branson has not -- at least publicly -- challenged Putin to any sort of duel, he has been actively Tweeting stories showing support for companies cutting their business ties to Russia along with stories about the Ukrainian people.
Bezos Has Been Silent on Ukraine
Amazon has a web page that details its efforts to help Ukraine on its website.
Alongside supplying humanitarian relief and support to Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), to help those affected by the violence, AWS has been working closely with Ukrainian customers and partners to keep their applications secure. Teams of Account Managers, Security Specialists, Solutions Architects, and other technical professionals are working around the clock to help customers and partners at this critical time. We are helping these customers employ security best practices, through following our Well-Architected Framework, to ensure that workloads are protected. In other cases, we are building and supplying technical services and tools to customers in Ukraine to help them securely migrate their on-premises infrastructure onto AWS in order to protect it from any potential physical or virtual attack.
Bezos has no obligation to publicly comment on Ukraine or anything else. His silence on the subject has been deafening compared to how vocal Musk and Branson have been. Bezos may be silent because he's no longer Amazon's CEO.
Amazon has not stopped providing Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Russia despite a public call from the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, Mykhailo Federov to do so.
Amazon did make a statement on the status of its businesses in Russian two days later on March 8.
"Given the ongoing situation in Russia and Ukraine, we’ve taken additional actions in the region. We’ve suspended shipment of retail products to customers based in Russia and Belarus, and we will no longer be accepting new Russia and Belarus-based AWS customers and Amazon third-party sellers. We are also suspending access to Prime Video for customers based in Russia, and we will no longer be taking orders for New World, which is the only video game we sell directly in Russia," the company wrote.
Not taking new customers falls short of shutting off AWS in the country and while not being able to watch the new season of "The Boys" may irk some Russian military leaders, it's not likely to hurt the country's infrastructure.
