While many well-known American companies such as McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and others are closing down or suspending operations in Russia following its invasion Ukraine, a Kansas-based oil and gas, and manufacturing giant is still standing by.
Koch Industries is a subsidiary of Guardian Industries that operates two Russian glass-manufacturing facilities. It employs 600 people.
“The abhorrent and horrific aggression against Ukraine is an insult to humanity,” Koch Industries President Dave Robertson stated in a statement. He added that the company “complys with all applicable sanctions and laws governing our relations and transactions within all countries we operate in.”
According to , a list created by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld (a Yale University School of Management senior professor), Koch Industries is not the only company that has resisted the trend of Russian companies leaving Russia.
There were 26 additional companies Sonnenfeld has classified as “digging into” and resisting international calls to leave Russia.
Sonnenfeld stated to NBC News that most companies curtail Russian operations when they are exposed in daylight. They do this by withdrawing, suspending, or trimming back, and then throwing piles of generic platitudes regarding the sympathy for the suffering of innocent Ukrainian citizens.” “But a core group of people is brazenly digging into, complicity with the most evil regime as collaborators with Tyranny thinking they can withstand the criticism if they’re not exposed to consumers backlash due the industrial nature their enterprises.
Companies operating in Russia include well-known brands such as Subway with 446 locations across the country, Emerson Electric, a multinational company based in the United States, and the global energy company Schlumberger.
According to The St. Louis Business Journal, Emerson Electric has halted operations within Ukraine following the invasion of Russia. NBC reached out to the company in order to find out if it intends to close its Russian operations.
Natura and Co., a Brazilian-based company behind Avon cosmetics and The Body Shop, were also on the list. Halliburton, an oil services giant that once employed former Vice President Dick Cheney, was also included.
Cargill, a global food company that had been included on the list since Thursday, stated in a statement that the Ukrainian people “live an unimaginable and terrible reality” and that it has been “scaling down” its Russian business activities as of Friday.
The company stated that it will continue to operate Russia’s essential food and feed facilities. Food is a fundamental human right, and should not be used as an instrument of war.
Soon after NBC News reached Pirelli for comment, the company declared it was hitting brakes all new Russian investments and curtailing operations in its tire factories.
Subway spokesperson stated in a statement that they are thinking of Ukraine and that there are no Russian corporate operations.
The company stated that it did not directly oversee the independent franchisees or their restaurants and had limited access to their day-today operations.
Halliburton and Natura did not respond to our initial requests for comment.
Halliburton, however, announced late Friday that it had stopped “future business” in Russia. This includes business with certain state-owned Russian customers.
Halliburton chief Jeff Miller stated in a statement that the war in Ukraine deeply upsets them. “We have placed safety and compliance as our top priorities since the outbreak of conflict.”
Few American companies have done business with Moscow as long as Koch Industries, or are as politically active in the U.S.
According to records from Open Secrets (a nonpartisan nonprofit that tracks the money in U.S. politics), Koch Industries provided at least $3.4 Million to GOP groups and Republican candidate campaigns in 2020.
The biggest recipient of Koch cash was Americans for Prosperity. This conservative and libertarian political advocacy group was founded by Charles Koch and his brother David. They died in 2019.
Americans for Prosperity received $8 million from Koch Industries in 2020. This is a record that shows their role in fueling the tea party movement as well as generating skepticism about climate change and opposing the Affordable Car Act.
The record shows that President Joe Biden is one of the largest recipients of campaign cash from Koch Industries.
The records reveal that the $63,745 Biden received in 2020 came from employees of Koch Industries and not from the company itself.
Although Koch Industries is a capitalist company, Fred Koch, the founder of Koch Industries, began his fortune building his family’s wealth by helping Josef Stalin, a communist, to establish the Soviet Union’s oil refining industry in the 1930s.
“Over time however, Stalin brutally expelled several of Koch’s Soviet colleagues,” Jane Mayer, of The New Yorker, wrote in August 2010 in a profile of Fred Koch’s children and their attempts at undermining then-President Barack Obama. “Koch was deeply touched by the experience and regretted his cooperation.”
CORRECTION (March 18, 20,22, 2:06 p.m. ET: An earlier version of this article misidentified the company Fred Koch founded. Koch Industries was founded by him, not Halliburton.
