How many countries have already exited Russia, and how does it influence its economy?

Author

Anastasiia Kovaliova

In July 2023, the KSE Institute identified another eight companies that exited the Russian market, with their rural number since the full-out Russian invasion having reached 262.

The KSE Institute presented these data in a special issue as part of the SelfSanctions / LeaveRussia project, which studies the impact of the outflow of foreign businesses on Russia’s economy.

The study results demonstrate that:

1,366 companies continue Russian operations;
515 companies have reduced current operations and held off on new investments;
1,219 companies have curtailed Russian operations; and
262 companies completed their withdrawal from Russia.

As of July 30, KSE Institute experts identified about 3,362 companies, organizations, and their brands from 92 countries and 58 industries and analyzed their position on the Russian market. About 40% of the companies are public ones.

"For ~1 480 public groups of companies, we also identified their operating business in Russia and found the data for 2021 before the invasion, which allowed us to calculate the value of capital invested in the country (about $189.5 billion), local revenue (about $305.6 billion), local assets (about $327.4 billion), as well as staff (about 1.428 million people) and taxes paid (about $25.2 billion)," the experts say.

1,734 foreign companies have reduced, suspended, or ceased operations in Russia. The 262 companies that had already completely exited the Russian Federation as of July 30 had at least 420,500 employees, $62.9 billion in annual revenue, $32.9 billion in capital, and $59.4 billion in assets in 2021.

The companies that announced their complete withdrawal from Russia had 296,300 employees, $57.5 billion in revenues, $23.9 billion in capital, and $28.5 billion in assets.

The companies that suspended operations on the Russian market had 92,200 employees, annual revenue of $28.6 billion, $37.4 billion in capital, and $97.4 billion in assets.

While the percentage of companies that unwound operations in Russia had been rising sharply immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine until mid-April 2022, the ratio of those who left to those who stayed has virtually remained in the last 11 months.

"Although we still see a periodic increase in the share of those companies that remain in the Russian market. However, looking at the total numbers in the KSE database, about 36.3% of foreign companies have already announced their withdrawal from the Russian market or suspended their activity, but another 40.6% are still remaining in the country, 15.3% are waiting, and only 7.8% have made a complete exit," the experts note.

How the exit of companies impacts the Russian economy

The impact on the Russian economy from just those 262 companies that completely left is hard to overestimate, since in 2021, they employed 29.4% of all the personnel employed by foreign companies, owned about 18.1% of the assets, had 17.4% of the capital invested by foreign companies, generated a revenue of $62.9 billion, or 20.6% of the total revenue, and paid ~$4.0 billion in taxes, or 15.7% of the total taxes paid by the companies observed.