The Russian business retreat - how the ratings measured up one year later, 31 January 2023

In the initial days and weeks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it became widely known and celebrated that over 1,000+ global multinational companies voluntarily declared their intention to exit Russia, with widespread coverage ranging from general media to academic studies to citations from Joe Biden and Volodomyr Zelenskyy. The Yale School of Management and the Kyiv School of Economics, among others, have carefully tracked and documented these corporate exits.

One year into the invasion, it is time to review whether these multinational businesses are really leaving Russia as they initially pledged to do – especially in light of recent, misleading headlines suggesting these 1,000+ companies are failing to follow through and/or turning their backs on their initial pledges. But even more importantly, it is also a pivotal moment to once again call out the western companies that inexplicably remain in Russia.

In this piece, we first briefly explain our own methodologies for tracking and classifying companies – both those who have exited and those who remain, drawing upon the original proprietary sourcing of both the Kyiv School of Economics as well as the Yale School of Management. We then review some common areas of contention, controversy and challenge surrounding the classification of both companies that remain and companies that have left, with case studies of individual companies as illustrative examples. Next, we analyze how cynical opportunists attempt to cast doubt on businesses pulling out of Russia using highly questionable if not outright fabricated data, and how some other studies appear to be consciously misrepresenting data on corporate retreats. Anti-Ukraine, ideological distortions have unfortunately muddied the waters on a topic which should be centered around facts, not idle speculation. Finally, we present an analytical dashboard breaking down corporate exits data analytics, based on the pioneering research and original calculations of the KSE Institute.