Western businesses backtrack on their Russia exit plans

Western companies, including Avon Products, Air Liquide and Reckitt, have remained in Russia despite saying they planned to leave after the invasion of Ukraine, as bureaucratic obstacles increase and consumer activity rebounds.

The Natura-owned cosmetics brand, the French industrial gas producer and the UK consumer group that produces everything from painkillers to condoms are among hundreds of western groups that have stayed in the country since the full-scale invasion in 2022.

“Many European companies have found themselves really between a rock and a hard place,” said one executive working with western companies in the country. “They said they’d leave. They were presented with a choice of buyers that were unacceptable to them.”

Overall, more than 2,100 multinationals have stayed in Russia since 2022, the Kyiv School of Economics has found, compared with about 1,600 international companies that have either quit the market or scaled back operations.

A rebound in consumer activity and “bureaucratic obstacles” are making the companies stay, the outlet suggested.