McDonald's, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Starbucks joined other US companies to stop selling their most popular products in Russia on Tuesday (8/3/2022).
According to Reuters, Pepsi and McDonald's were pioneer companies that worked with the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia decades ago and were seen as improving international relations.
All four companies have major operations in Russia.
McDonald's said it would continue to pay salaries to its 62,000 employees in Russia as it closed 847 restaurants. The first location to open in Russia, on Moscow's central Pushkin Square in 1990, became a symbol of American capitalism that flourished when the Soviet Union fell.
"I'm glad they came and made the right decision," Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management who tracks the attitudes of big Russian companies, said after the move by McDonald's.
"This is a very important impact, and it is both symbolic and substantive," he added.
Starbucks Corp. also temporarily closed hundreds of stores. PepsiCo Inc will suspend all advertising in Russia and stop selling its beverage brand, while continuing to sell basic necessities such as milk and baby food. Rival Coca-Cola Co said it would suspend business there.
Coca-Cola was the official drink of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, although the United States boycotted the event in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
A number of other companies have also rebuked Russia, and Amazon.com Inc said on Tuesday it would stop accepting new customers for its cloud services in Russia and Ukraine.
Universal Music suspended all operations in Russia, and online dating service Bumble Inc will remove its app from stores in Russia and Belarus.
Earlier, Royal Dutch Shell Plc stopped buying oil from Russia and said it would cut ties to the country completely, as the United States stepped up its campaign to punish Moscow by banning imports of Russian oil and energy.
Meanwhile, Moscow called the attack a "special military operation" aimed not at occupying territory but destroying Ukraine's military capabilities.
The West's move to isolate Russia economically for attacking its neighbors has hit global commodity and energy markets hard, sending prices soaring. This incident threatens to derail the global economic recovery which is just recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Britain also said it would phase out imports of Russian oil over 2022, to give businesses time to find alternative sources of supply.
