HP has completely withdrawn from the Russian market to comply with sanctions imposed by the US in response to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
The company’s local website, which has served as a home base for driver downloads and technical support in Russian, is now focused on Kazakhstan. Russian, a former Soviet state, is the country’s official language and one of the two most spoken languages.
Despite the removal of online support, Russian customers can still access drivers for notebooks, HP printers and other hardware on the redirected website.
HP withdraws from the Russian market
That of Russia CNews was among the first to share information along the way, claiming that HP’s termination of operations in the country was a shock, with no prior notices shared. CNews This is in stark contrast to Microsoft, which gave Russian customers a week’s notice before shutting down.
HP began to pull back in March 2022, announcing the suspension of hardware sales. However, it took only two more months for the country to receive parallel imports, effectively rendering the change ineffective.
CNews revealed that distributors in the country such as Softline, Merlion and M.Video-Eldorado have all declined to comment on the state of HP imports and sales, possibly citing higher than expected HP sales.
However, Russia does not seem too concerned about HP’s decision to leave the market. In a subheading, loosely translated as ‘Everything is bad in the world too’ CNews reveals that while HP may be boycotting Russia, the rest of the world may be on the verge of boycotting HP over the printer block.
Ny Breaking approached HP to discuss the above, but the company did not immediately respond.