According to KSE Institute, only eight Italian companies have fully exited Russia, 31 have reduced operations, and 107 are still active — including Ariston, a heating and air-conditioning manufacturer. Ariston had its Russian subsidiary seized in April 2024 and handed to a Gazprom-linked entity.
Yet in March this year, Moscow unexpectedly reversed the decision and returned control to the Italian group — the only such case among more than 500 foreign companies whose Russian assets have been expropriated. The Financial Times attributed the move to “intense lobbying by high-ranking Italians.”
The CEO of Ariston, Paolo Merloni, said he was “very pleased with the decision of the Russian authorities,” reaffirming his intention to “resume activities with our local leadership.”
B4Ukraine urged Ariston not to re-enter the Russian market. “We reached out to arrange a private meeting and show them what it means to do business with a government responsible for war crimes and an illegal aggression against a sovereign state,” Nezir Sinani, the coalition’s director, told L’Espresso.
Ariston agreed to meet only if B4Ukraine signed a non-disclosure agreement forbidding any mention of the meeting — or its content — for ten years. “No other company has ever required us to sign a confidentiality agreement as a precondition for a meeting,” Sinani noted. “The inability to make the content public would have undermined our work, so we declined.”
Ariston has made a clear and conscious choice to re-engage with a regime in active violation of international law. This is not a case of passive complicity. This is a deliberate decision to do business with a government responsible for atrocities, crimes against humanity, and an illegal war against a sovereign European nation. It is an action that places Ariston on the wrong side of history.
Ariston’s case also shows once again that Russia is a lawless, high-risk market where foreign businesses are at the mercy of an unpredictable regime. B4Ukraine urges Italian authorities to press national businesses to sever ties with Russia rather than risk enabling its war machine.