Russian CEO Sanctions, A Year Later And No Change Of Heart In Moscow

Russian CEO Sanctions, A Year Later And No Change Of Heart In Moscow

Share to Linkedin The Stalin-era Russian Foreign Ministry building seen against the backdrop of the International ... [+] Business Centre in Moscow. The government still rules the roost; not the heavily sanctioned business elite. (Photo by Alexander NEMENOV / AFP) The Western world's unprecedented sanctions against the Russian economy is approaching its one-year anniversary. Russia is still standing, the typical Kremlin acolyte would remind anyone. Many Russia watchers have spent the last 10 months predicting the ouster of Vladimir Putin, the collapse of his all-powerful United Russia party, and a Great Depression similar to what occurred in the early 1990s after the fall of the USSR. That has not happened yet, and may never. A surprisingly low 8. 5% of all European companies that were in Russia actually left Russia, according to research from the University of St. Gallen and the IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland. Fewer than 18% of U. S. subsidiaries operating in Russia have left, the study found. (I wrote about this way back in April.) In addition to taking control of Russian Central Bank accounts held in banks in the U. S. and Europe, Washington and Brussels took it upon themselves to sanction private sector