Two more Western giants have fallen to the Kremlin. The Russian government has placed Switzerland’s Nestlé and France’s Auchan under temporary administration, a move that strips the companies of their previous management and threatens to end in confiscation or nationalization. 

These two firms were the most prominent amid a week-long, Kremlin-driven haul that included the former Leroy Merlin, a French home improvement chain already under new ownership; two French logistics companies and a United States healthcare packaging firm. 

The sweeping reallocation of assets in Russia — a regular feature of the country’s ruthless domestic politics, but a less frequent piece of geopolitical vandalism — is proceeding at a brisk pace. For anyone who might have momentarily forgotten, business and geopolitics are inseparable in Russia, not to mention everywhere else in the world these days. 

The Auchan and Nestlé cases stand out for at least two reasons. Russia hasn’t seized consumer-facing Western companies of this profile and magnitude since its 2023 attack on Denmark’s Carlsberg and France’s Danone. Britain’s Unilever plc once had four factories in Russia and a firm grip on the country’s supermarket shelves, but sold up in 2024. Alexei Sagal’s Arnest, already owner of several departed Western brands, bought the company as it emerged from the Russian government’s punitive exit process. 

But these two cases stand out for more than their size and their prominence. Nestlé and Auchan were companies that chose to stay in Russia following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Usually, the Kremlin makes predatory moves on Western companies as they head for the exits. (More recently, the Russian government has also started talking about punishing so-called bad leavers, should they ever want to return to Russia.) 

Auchan and Nestlé’s Russian operations resisted Western pressure campaigns to leave and bucked the exodus of hundreds of international companies. Nestlé reduced its product assortment and investment program in Russia in common with other companies that decided to stay, but were wary of being........

© The Moscow Times