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A large number of Western firms have continued to operate and invest in Russia since Putin's

invasion of Ukraine, according to data obtained by Professor Simon Evanet from the

University of St. Gallen and Professor Niccolo Pisani. In fact, they say that less than 9%

of Western firms have divested from Russia in their paper, which was published in January this year.

According to their research, U. US-based companies accounted for more exits around 18%

than those based in the EU, around 8%, and Japan 15%.

These findings, they say, call into question the willingness of Western firms to decouple

from economies their governments now deem to be geopolitical rivals.

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld at Yale University disputes those figures.

He and his team at Yale have been tracking the responses of over 1,500 companies since the

invasion of Ukraine occurred. They find that over 1,000 companies have publicly announced

that they are voluntarily curtailing operations in Russia to some degree beyond the bare minimum

legally required by international sanctions, but they

agreed that many companies have continued to operate in Russia undeterred. The Kiev School

of Economics estimates that overseas companies operating in Russia will have earned profits

of around $20 billion since the invasion, and

that 18 of that 20 billion is likely attributable to Western companies.

The problem for these companies is that the Kremlin has blocked them from accessing those

profits in an effort to clamp down on companies from what they call

unfriendly nations.

The Kiev School of Economics researcher points out that it's not easy to calculate a precise

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