PRESS: US education platform Coursera returns to Crimea

MOSCOW, Jul 5 (PRIME) -- The U.S. government has officially allowed online education platform Coursera to resume activities in Crimea and Sevastopol, which has become the first case of lifting sanctions against Russia, business daily Kommersant reported Tuesday.

Washington introduced a package of sanctions against Moscow in 2014 for integration of Crimea, which joined the country after a public referendum. The U.S. government also banned many local companies from doing business on Russia’s new territory. Citizens of the Crimean peninsula thus found themselves deprived of access to services of payment system PayPal, application stores Google Play and Apple Store, and others.

Access to Coursera for Crimea was restricted on February 1, 2015.

“We saw that Coursera and other education projects negatively approached these limitations, but they found it hard singlehandedly to hold discussions with U.S. authorities,” Isaak Frumin, head of the Institute for Educational Development at the Higher School of Economics, told the daily.

“That is why it was very important that the professional community would precisely articulate their position on the matter…I don’t know any U.S. professor who would back up limitation of access to Coursera in Crimea.”

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