April 14 (Reuters) - Tech giant Yandex said on Thursday Artem Savinovsky has been appointed to lead Yandex LLC, its Russian operating subsidiary, replacing Elena Bunina who held the role of general director since December 2017.

Artem will also continue to serve as Head of Media Services, Yandex, one of Europe's largest internet businesses, registered in the Netherlands, said in a statement.

Bunina stepped down some two weeks before her tenure was due to expire on April 15. Yandex gave no reason for the move, which is the second recent high-level departure from the company, which builds intelligent products and services powered by machine learning.

(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)