The US Treasury Department has opened access to free services for residents of Crimea

The US Treasury Department issued an addendum to the December 19, 2014 presidential decree . This is the latest of the decrees that tightened US sanctions against Russia in connection with the annexation of the Crimea.

The Obama decree “On blocking the property of certain individuals and banning certain transactions in relation to the Crimean region of Ukraine” prohibited “the export, re-export, sale or supply, directly or indirectly, of any goods, services or technologies from the United States or the United States it was not in the Crimean region of Ukraine. " The embargo imposed concerned both American products and Internet services, programs and applications - including free ones.

Now, for some reason, American officials backed off. In addition, it is explained that the ban on use does not apply to free services that are widely distributed (here, in theory, get sites and social networks, and free programs, and email services).

Paid services (for example, domain registration, web hosting, Steam) still remain in the banned list. It is also forbidden to provide any services to persons included in the sanction lists.
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The Internet blockade of the Crimea started at the beginning of the year, being a continuation of the sanctions wars. Gradually Crimeans were denied access to Steam , Google Apps , SourceForge , AdSense services. US Post refused to send parcels to the Crimea , eBay - to cooperate with Crimeans , and HP and Dell - to sell their equipment .