Spring is the time when many businesses delve into numbers summing up their achievements and failures in the shape of annual reports. These are just a few numbers that all businesses still operating in Russia should not forget.
12 million Ukrainians have fled their homes to safety elsewhere in Ukraine or abroad.
2500 civilians have been reported to be killed — in the occupied cities countless more.
500 people were abducted and illegally imprisoned.
205 children were murdered.
Dozens of women were raped.
All the war crimes committed by the Russian soldiers in Ukraine were funded with the money taxpayers paid to Russia’s state budget. Hundreds of international companies share the responsibility for these war crimes with the Kremlin and should report all these incidents of suffering and atrocities in Ukraine together with tax expenses in their financial statements and annual reports.
The question is: what is next? Does your company choose to keep accounting for the war crimes in the next financial statements by sticking to murderous “business as usual” in Russia? Or will it choose to stand with Ukraine and the entire world for the sake of humanity? There is nothing in-between anymore.
Over 750 companies have chosen to curtail operations in Russia since the beginning of the war, according to data compiled by a team of researchers at the Yale School of Management. But about 200 companies from all over the world keep full-scale operations in the country, which brings death and suffering to Ukrainians every day. Some companies come from countries with undemocratic regimes, such as China, but some originate in the United States and Europe — France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, and Greece.
As Ukrainians and global citizens, we ask every conscious business to exit Russia as well as this shameful list of the companies that choose greed over morals.