Yuri Milner, a billionaire Silicon Valley investor, said Monday that he had relinquished his Russian citizenship.
“2014 saw the permanent departure of my family and I from Russia after its annexation of Crimea. And we successfully finished the procedure of renunciation of our Russian citizenship this summer “Milner, a Moscow native, tweeted.
According to an information sheet on DST Global’s website, Milner, the founder of the online investment company DST Global and one of the company’s first investors in Facebook, has been an Israeli citizen since 1999.
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It claimed that the physicist and venture investor had no assets in Russia and that 97% of his money was made outside of the country.
The statement said, “Yuri has never met Vladimir Putin, either personally or in a group.
Breakthrough Prize Foundation, a Milner-founded nonprofit organization, has denounced the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Breakthrough Prize Foundation firmly opposes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its unwarranted and cruel attacks on the civilian population in March. “As the awful war in Ukraine continues, with deaths and crimes growing,” it stated.
According to DST Global, Milner’s foundations have contributed at least $11 million to aid Ukrainian refugees and exiled scientists.
In 2016, Milner and the late British cosmologist Stephen Hawking unveiled a bold plan to send nanocraft, or tiny and light spacecraft, on a voyage to Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to Earth.
Together, they launched a $100 million, 10-year initiative to survey the sky to find intelligent alien life. Milner provided the funding for this endeavor.
