Making a killing: The Western companies that gained the most by staying in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine

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Over 11,000 Western сompanies are still in Russia

Donald Trump has been busy of late, resuming official contact with Vladimr Putin and kicking up a scandal with Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. The American president’s actions have only further fueled discussions about the possibility of lifting sanctions, and several Western brands are showing increasing interest in returning to Russia. Russian media fueled speculation that Inditex — the Spanish fashion giant behind Zara, Bershka, Pull & Bear, and Stradivarius — was planning a comeback. The report about Inditex was later debunked, but South Korea’s Hyundai Motors appears more serious about resuming business, while Renault is also considering a return. Samsung, which suspended direct shipments, has already ramped up its advertising budget to promote smartphones in Russia.

The financial impact on Western companies that exited Russia varies, but for some, foregone revenues are counted in tens of billions of dollars. Russian officials claim that American businesses that exited the country have lost $300 billion over three years of war, while European companies lost an estimated €100 billion in just 18 months, according to the Financial Times. Some companies, however, chose to stay and avoid such losses. The Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company, for example, continues to profit in Russia through its subsidiary “Multon Partners,” which produces “Dobry Cola” (lit. “Kind Cola”) while retaining trademarks for Coca-Cola, Sprite, and Fanta — brands it officially withdrew from the market.

The number of foreign-owned companies in Russia dropped from 29,000 in March 2021 to 19,000 by March 2024, according to a Kommersant report citing Kontur.Fokus research. However, The Insider’s analysis of SPARK-Interfax data suggests that as of early 2025, 14,200 companies in Russia had owners from Western nations, or 11,600 when excluding Cyprus-based parent companies (detailed methodology below).

How the data was calculated

Western-owned companies were defined as those with parent firms or direct ownership from EU nations, the European Economic Area, the UK, Switzerland, the U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Japan. By early 2025, Russia had 14,200 registered companies linked to these countries.

This figure includes entities like Rosneft — a Russian company in which BP controls a 19.75% stake via BP Russian Investments Ltd (UK) — as well as Russian firms whose parent companies are registered in Cyprus. Due to Cyprus’s longtime status as an offshore haven, where distinguishing genuine foreign owners from Russian oligarchs is difficult, The Insider excluded all Cyprus-based firms from its analysis.

Since financial reports for 2024 have not yet been published for most companies as of March 2025, The Insider analyzed 2023 data using the average exchange rate of 85.163 rubles per U.S. dollar.

Over 1 trillion rubles in net profits

The total revenue of Western-owned (excluding Cyprus) companies in Russia amounted to 17.3 trillion rubles ($203 billion) in 2023, down from 23.6 trillion rubles in 2021, the last full year before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The analysis includes only companies that filed financial reports, covering about 80% of the total.

Total profits for these firms totaled 1.23 trillion rubles ($14.4 billion), with over half of this sum generated by two quasi-foreign companies — Rosneft and Russneft, the latter 31.28% owned by Swiss-based Rambero Holding AG.

Sectors where profits surged in 2023 compared to pre-war 2021 include pharmaceuticals, wholesale trade, machinery and industrial equipment, food production, construction materials, cosmetics and household chemicals, software development, hospitality (restaurants and hotels), and construction.

Plenty of individual companies benefited from this boom. For example, Swiss logistics firm InterRail Holding («Интеррейл Холдинг») tripled its revenue (from 1 billion to 3 billion rubles) after a dip in 2021, while French-owned cheese producer Bongrain Europa Vostok («Бонгрэн Европа Восток») saw growth of 100%. The revenue of German industrial equipment supplier AscoBloc Debag Rus («Аскоблок Дебаг Рус») increased by a factor of 5.5.

Part of this growth resulted from foreign competitors exiting Russia, allowing those that stayed to fill gaps in the market. For instance, in the banking sector, Austria’s Raiffeisenbank was one of the few large financial firms still processing transactions in dollars and euros, allowing it to hike fees and generate over half of Raiffeisen Group’s global banking profits. Despite pressure from the European Central Bank (ECB) to exit Russia, Raiffeisenbank is dragging its feet, pledging only to reduce its Russian loan portfolio by 65% by 2026.

Small and microbusinesses, particularly those involved in trade, saw explosive revenue growth — sometimes tenfold. Many of these firms likely played a role in rebuilding supply chains disrupted by sanctions.

As Andrei Yakovlev, an associate researcher at Harvard's Davis Center, explains: “To bypass sanctions, Russia heavily relies on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for foreign trade. Large corporations are easier to monitor, but there are tens of thousands of SMEs, making oversight nearly impossible. This has fueled the rapid rise of certain small businesses, particularly those involved in importing critical components for the defense sector and beyond. These intermediaries profit from the risk they assume, but identifying those facilitating sanctions evasion for military purposes is challenging.”

Half a trillion rubles for the Kremlin’s war chest

By remaining in Russia, Western-owned businesses are not only profiting from the war but also helping fund Russia’s military budget. The Insider estimates that their total tax contributions in 2023 reached approximately 500 billion rubles ($4.85 billion).

For context, Russia’s total non-oil-and-gas tax revenues in 2023 were 20 trillion rubles. The corporate income tax alone from these companies directly contributed at least 111 billion rubles ($1.3 billion) to the Russian war budget.