The Rise of Ideological Businesses in a Divided World

To survive geopolitics, businesses have to evolve

It is well known that after the Ukraine war began, in February, 2022, the West started to impose its most severe sanctions barrage on Russia in all of history. As the red tape was applied, over 1,000 Western companies fled Russia. By some estimates, this caused 30 years of foreign investment in Russia to be reversed in just a few months. Some may even remember the “immediate jolts” in Russian society, like lines in Russian metro stations when people could no longer use Apple Pay and Google Pay to pay for tickets. Before the war, almost one-third of Russians (29%) paid for goods with Google’s digital wallet.

However, what is less known is that while certain firms, like Visa and Mastercard, exited Russia because of the sanctions, the vast majority of companies left Russia by choice.