The PHF and Russia’s largest tech company share the same chairman

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, sports federations and leagues have played a major role condemning Russia’s actions.

Russian athletes are currently barred by most Olympic sport federations, FIFA kicked Russian clubs and national teams out of international competitions, and leagues around the world have issued statements of support and organized fundraising efforts for Ukraine.

But the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF), a women’s professional hockey league in North America that will conclude its seventh season this weekend with the 2022 Isobel Cup Playoffs, has remained silent on the topic of Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine. 

The chair of the PHF’s board of governors, American John Boynton, is also the chairman of Yandex, Russia’s largest technology company. The company was recently described by Wired as “Russia’s Google, Uber, Spotify, and Amazon combined.”

While Yandex rose to prominence as a search engine, it has become a ubiquitous presence in all aspects of life in Russia. The company’s many apps are used for everything from hailing a ride to aggregating news to paying for a meal.

Boynton, a founding shareholder of Yandex who lives in the Boston area, has been a non-executive director since 2000, and was appointed as Chairman of the Board in 2016. He credits his Russian entrepreneurial ambitions to a trip he took to the Soviet Union as a junior in high school. In addition to Yandex, Boynton also co-founded Russian companies CompTek and Intranet.

And in recent years, he has become one of the most important figures in women’s professional hockey.

His company, BTM Partners, currently owns three of the six teams in the PHF, which rebranded from the National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL) last year. The three