According to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, refusing to stop their activities in Russia is equivalent to financing the “atrocities” that the Moscow government is committing in Ukraine and “making profits on blood”: for this reason, in a tweet published in the morning today, March 26, Kuleba calls for a boycott of Auchan, Leroy Merlin and Decathlon, three companies that continue to do business on Russian soil. The first two French companies had been recently attack also by the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, together with the car manufacturer Renault, who, however, after the harsh words pronounced by the leader in video connection to the Paris Parliament, had decided to leave Russia.
According to monitoring of the Yale School of Management, which updates the bulletin practically every day, since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, at least 450 companies have withdrawn from Russia in protest. A mass exodus in which economic giants from different sectors took part, such as Ikea, Volkswagen, Nike, the consultancy firm Deloitte and the oil giant British Petroleum. Many companies that have not closed all Russian offices have in any case suspended services within the territory: from bookings that can be made through the Booking and Airbnb platforms, to purchases through eBay and Asos, to end up with the acquisitions of Netflix in Russian territory. Closed also 850 McDonald’s restaurants and 130 Starbuck’s bars, and sales in Russia by multinationals stopped Coke and Pepsi.
A very strong signal of protest and aversion to the military operations of the Kremlin, which is also reflected in the artistic and sports field: Eurovision has banned the representatives of Russia from singing competition, while Fifa has decided to oust her from the next World Cup in Qatar, scheduled for this year. Also different media they decided to leave the country: BBC and Bloomberg journalists withdrawn, CNN broadcasts stopped.
The companies that have decided to stay are targeted by the hackers who have declared war on Vladimir Putin: for example Nestlé, hit gives Anonymous last March 22. The decentralized movement of hacktivismo had given the company 48 hours to close all its activities in Russia. Failure to meet the deadline led to the release of at least 10 Gigabytes of company data, private information such as emails, passwords and corporate customer details.
In addition to Nestlé, companies that have refused the boycott while remaining in the country include the multinational electronic commerce Alibaba, the company Huawei, a leader in the telecommunications sector, the computer manufacturer Lenovo, and that of smartphones Xiaomi (in second place for sale of phones in Russia). The Italian group Pirelli has not left the country, where it produces 10% of its second tires Reuters, but has reduced its operations. As well as the Barilla company, which limited itself to freezing its investments in Russia. Among the Italian groups most linked to Moscow, there is also the Unicredit bank, which boasts credits of almost 8 billion euros with Russian customers. Unicredit CEO Andrea Orcel has declared: “We need to seriously consider the impact and consequences and complexity of the detachment of a complete bank from the country”, but subsequently affirmed which is considering leaving Russia.
