The office was already involved "in many other Amazon projects," a lab manager told Vector. "We are no longer part of a small startup," he said in Ukranian, "but a full-fledged R&D center working for one of the world's largest corporations."

Ring Ukraine has repeatedly drawn scrutiny and criticism over the past year. In November, five U.S. senators, in a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, released the day before the Vector story, had raised concerns about the Kyiv office's access to Ring home security footage and other private information and asked whether a foreign government could access the material as well. The letter cited an Intercept report that many employees in the office were provided blanket, inappropriate access to a web server containing customer video files.