Yale Researchers Say Hundreds of Western Companies Remain in Russia

Apple, McDonald's and more than 1,000 other Western companies have fled Russia since it invaded Ukraine — but several hundred have stayed and President Vladimir Putin is making it hard for them to get out.

Since Russia started its war with Ukraine in February 2022, 1,033 mostly Western companies have either temporarily or completely halted operations in Russia, according to data compiled by Yale School of Management.

Yale researchers assign grades to corporations based on their level of withdrawal from the country with Apple, McDonald’s, IMAX and Volkswagen, among others, receiving top marks.

More than 200 companies have continued operations as usual in Russia and 179 businesses are “buying time” by postponing future plans while continuing substantive business.

Unilever, Nestlé, Mondelēz and Procter & Gamble, the world’s largest consumer goods companies, are among the companies “buying time," Yale said. But experts say time is quickly running out for companies to leave the country.

There's good reason to stay. Coca-Cola told investors Wednesday that its suspension of sales in Russia last year pulled down global sales of its signature Coke and other sparkling drinks in an otherwise strong second quarter.

The “window of opportunity to exit Russia is almost closed,” Maria Shagina, a sanctions expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told CNN. “Western companies are now caught between a rock and a hard place.”

The rock and the hard place are likely the Russian government, which has begun making it even more difficult for companies who choose to leave to do so. On July 16, Putin temporarily nationalized shares of French food company Danone and Danish multinational brewery Carlsberg Group after they announced that they would be selling their businesses in the country, Russian state-owned media RT reported.

Leaving is still the only legitimate option, according to Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, who leads the team collecting data on companies in Russia. “The idea is to increase the level of discomfort, so [the Russian people] start to ask who the author of their misfortune is,” Sonnenfeld told CNN in early July.

The United States and its allies have imposed a barrage of sanctions on Russia targeting its financial, energy and military sectors in hopes of isolating it from the global financial system. So far, the U.S. has imposed more than 3,126 sanctions against Russia, more than any other country, according to the Atlantic Council’s Russia Sanctions Database.