Being "apolitical" is no excuse for funding a russian company (yandex). If they did not do this I would probably be a paying customer. There is nothing else in this space that has the trust or features that kagi has.
The other point I have heard them say about using yandex is that there isn't another index that they could use that would be as good. This is a sound argument, but I would rather have worse image search than pay (even indirectly) russia. I wish they would "do the hard thing" and make their own (which I am sure is easier said than done).
As somebody who is also not a Kagi customer because of this the statement of Vlad is exactly "throwing his hands up".
Two quotes from his response:
"Any good search engine remains unimpressed by world politics."
"We set out to fix search, not the world."
All the technical explanations between these two quotes could have also been used to justify why they are not contributing to Russias economy.
But he didn't do that. That is a conscious choice while clearly being aware of the issue.
They are contributing to Russia's economy so I'm not sure what you hoped he'd say contrary to that. I don't consider someone buying from US businesses to be any kind of implicit support of my government, while at the same
time choosing to avoid businesses from a country in the manner desired here is taking a pretty strong political stance.
The other point I have heard them say about using yandex is that there isn't another index that they could use that would be as good. This is a sound argument, but I would rather have worse image search than pay (even indirectly) russia. I wish they would "do the hard thing" and make their own (which I am sure is easier said than done).