CONNECTICUT (Transatlantic Today) – Several well-known corporations, like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, have shut down or suspended operations in Russia as a result of the country’s invasion of Ukraine, but a Kansas-based gas, oil, and manufacturing behemoth is staying there for the time being.
Koch Industries, whose subsidiary company Guardian Industries employs 600 workers in 2 glass-making factories in Russia, claimed that shutting up business now will put its employees at risk and cause more harm than good.
According to a list drawn up by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a senior professor at Yale University School of Management, Koch Industries, which has donated millions to the Republican Party and also has a bunch of other operations in Moscow that employ a dozen more individuals, is far from the only well-known firm subverting the trend of iconic companies leaving Russia.
As of Friday, Sonnenfeld had identified 26 more enterprises that were digging in and ignoring international demands to leave Russia.
Well-known companies including Subway, which has 446 fast-food chain sites in Russia, and also US-based corporations like Emerson Electric, which makes storage systems and electric motors, and Schlumberger, a global oil firm, are still operating in the country.
According to The St. Louis Business Journal, Emerson Electric suspended business in Ukraine following the Russian invasion. NBC has contacted the corporation to inquire about its plans to close its Russian operations.
Natura and Co., the Brazilian firm behind Avon cosmetics, The Body Shop, and some other beauty items, was also on the list, as was Halliburton, the oil industry titan that previously hired former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Cargill, the world’s largest food corporation, claimed in a statement that the Ukrainian citizens are facing a horrible and unthinkable reality and that the firm has been “scaling back” its commercial activity in the nation since Friday.
Pirelli, a well-known tire maker who had been on the list Thursday, said it was halting all new projects in Russia and reducing operations at its tire manufacturing units shortly after NBC News contacted the business for comment.
Few American companies have done business with Russia for as long a period as Koch Industries has — or been as politically involved in the United States.
According to documents maintained by Open Secrets, a nonpartisan organization that tracks money in American politics, Koch Industries contributed $3.4 million to Republican nominees and groups in 2020.
But Americans for Prosperity, a conservative and libertarian political advocacy group formed by Charles Koch, the company’s CEO, and his brother David, who died in 2019, was the greatest beneficiary of Koch donations.
Americans for Prosperity, which is most known for stoking the tea party movement and stirring up climate change denial and resistance to the Affordable Care Act, received $8 million from Koch Industries in 2020, according to documents.
President Biden, a Democrat whose own stance on climatic shift is anathema to most in the conservative ecosphere and who has been chastised by several Republicans because of not taking a tougher stance against Moscow, is also listed in the Open Secrets report among the biggest receivers of Koch Industries-linked campaign cash, according to the records.
The $63,745 Biden received in 2020, though, came from Koch Industries workers, not the firm itself, according to documents.
Despite his capitalist background, Halliburton founder Fred Koch started his family’s wealth in the 1930s by assisting a Communist, Josef Stalin, in establishing the Soviet Union’s oil refining business.
