[7] Yandex argued that it had no choice but to follow Russia’s strict censorship laws, and the company sold its news service soon after the invasion.

[9][10] In July 2024, the holding company that he leads, Nebius Group, sold all of its interest in Yandex for a fraction of its original value and severed all of its ties with Russia.

After working at a state pipeline research institute, he started a small business importing personal computers from Austria.

[18] Yandex, a Nasdaq listed company, developed, and offered a variety of technologies and services under Volozh, in the fields of Ecommerce, navigation, mobility, autonomous vehicles, payments, music, emails and more.

[22][23] After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in May 2022 Volozh wrote a letter to then Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, and to the ministers of finance, interior, and innovation & technology stating that 'I have made a decision to move the global Yandex headquarters to Tel Aviv and bring many hundreds of developers, engineers and technologists to Israel'.

[27] In an interview with Bloomberg in January 2025, Volozh said that it took 18 months to issue a statement on the war because he first needed to relocate 1,000 Yandex employees who wanted to leave Russia.

[33] Volozh's connection to Israel began a few years before that; from 2010 to 2012 he served as a board member of Face.com, an Israeli facial-recognition company which was sold to Facebook in 2012.

[34] From 2015 to 2020 he served as a board member of NeuroSteer, an Israeli company that specialized in brain signal processing and big data analysis.

In an interview in 2019 Volozh stated that Israel is a very attractive country, first and foremost because of its human potential, and also because of its role in the global economy.

According to Agentstvo, the website of Volozh described him as "a Kazakhstan-born, Israeli tech entrepreneur, computer scientist, investor, and philanthropist" and did not mention his Russian background.

[37] Kyiv Post, citing Wikiganda, argues that Volozh deleted some elements related to his past life in Russia on his Wikipedia page using an IP address.

His son Timofey is a New York-based jazz drummer who since March 2022 promoted and played at benefit concerts aimed at supporting Ukraine.