Over three short weeks, Yuri Milner has gone from hyper-cautious to hyper-critical on the delicate matter of Vladimir Putin. Milner, as I wrote earlier this month, is the Silicon Valley leader with the closest disclosed ties to the Kremlin, and so has been under pressure to say something about the regime that helped bankroll his career in venture capital. Milner has since become an Israeli citizen, and relatively little of the total money he has raised, by this point, can be tied back to Moscow. Still, a now-sanctioned Russian oligarch provided pivotal early backing for Milner’s firm, DST Global, that made it possible for him to make a spectacularly successful bet on Facebook. And so as corporate America grew louder and more unanimous in its opposition to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it seemed a safe prediction that Yuri—now a bona fide tech celebrity with a $100 million mansion in the Los Altos hills—wouldn’t be able to stay silent without facing some kind of backlash in the media, if not from his peers. 

Even so, I confess that I was surprised on Monday when Milner’s team released an unequivocal, finger-wagging condemnation of the government that made his American dream possible. “The Breakthrough Prize Foundation strongly condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its unprovoked and brutal assaults against the civilian population,” reads one of two statements released Monday, this one by Milner’s signature philanthropic effort. “We wholeheartedly endorse their stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine in support of their unqualified right to peace, security and self-determination.”