Multinational companies, including such giants as Google and Coca-Cola, appear to be double-dealing when it comes to Russia-annexed Crimea. Not wishing to relinquish either the Ukrainian or Russian markets, they behave differently in each one, whose combined retail trade markets had a turnover of nearly $600 billion last year.
Sometimes their
actions spark the ire of consumers who are sensitive over the status of Crimea.
Russia invaded the Ukrainian peninsula in February 2014 and annexed it a month
later after a sham referendum that Kyiv and the West didn’t recognize. Moscow’s
belligerence subsequently drew economic sanctions and travel bans for
individuals associated with the military takeover.
So with tensions
high, the Russian unit of Coca-Cola caused a stir when it released a holiday
season-themed map that initially didn’t include Crimea. When Russian customers
complained, the beverage company attached Crimea to Russia, in turn, irking
Ukrainians.
The row revealed
the precarious positions in which companies doing business in both countries
find themselves, Oleg Ustenko, executive director of the Bleyzer Foundation,
told the Kyiv Post.
“The share of the
market they control both in Russia and Ukraine is their main motivation in
terms of informational strategy,” Ustenko said. “They don’t want to lose the
market; neither do they want to lose their reputation. They are serving two
masters.”
These companies are
counting on Russia’s war against Ukraine ending soon.
“Sooner than later,
they think,” Ustenko said. “They are playing a waiting game. Do you think it
was different when there was tension between Peru and Chile (during their
maritime dispute two years ago)? They have been behaving the same all over the
world. They always say: ‘We are politically neutral, we don’t know anything
about it, our mission is to produce goods and satisfy our customers.’”
The scandal
prompted the soda producer to write a letter of apology to the Ukrainian
Embassy in Washington, D.C.
“I can only
apologize for this as it simply should never have happened,” Clyde C.
Tuggle, Coca-Cola senior vice president, said in correspondence to Ukraine’s
embassy on Jan. 6. “It is not, and has never been, our policy to engage in the
affairs of state in any of the more than 200 countries and territories where we
operate. Our mission is to refresh the world and spread optimism through the
high-quality products that we produce and distribute everywhere.”
The day before the apology was issued, lawmaker and former journalist
Mustafa Nayyem called on consumers to boycott Coca-Cola products on Jan. 5,
suggesting sharing his post with the hashtag #BanCocaCola. In several hours,
#BanCocaCola made it to the top of Ukraine’s Twitter trends.
This wasn’t the first foreign company to trigger an outcry over Crimea.
Users of the Russian version of Google Maps see the peninsula as part of
Russia. Meanwhile, Ukrainian users see Crimea as part of Ukraine, and the
rest of the world sees it as a disputed territory. Google has not responded to
a Kyiv Post request for comment.
“This is business after all,” Ustenko said. “These companies don’t have
any interests besides economic ones.”
Sociologist Iryna Bekeshkina who
heads the Democratic Initiatives think thank agreed: “This is business,
business and nothing except business.”
“All these companies are interested
in is their consumers. Objectively, there are more of them in Russia than in
Ukraine,” she told the Kyiv Post.
And the services or products of
multinationals aren’t likely to face boycotts by Ukrainian consumers, she added.
“Most of those who have strong feelings against Russia do not buy Russian
goods,” Bekeshkina said.
She said multinationals fear
international sanctions.
Munich-based Siemens AG, Europe’s
largest engineering company, was allegedly contracted to supply Crimea with gas
turbines, bypassing sanctions, according to a report by Dzerkalo Tyzhnia.
Siemens denied the allegations.
“Siemens always conducts its
business within all applicable political and legal frameworks, and this
continues to hold true. Siemens respects the decisions regarding sanctions and
will, of course, abide by the current sanction provisions,” Siemens spokesman
Wolfram Trost told the Kyiv Post by email.
Bekeshkina and
Ustenko agree – multinationals will keep holding on to both markets.
“I guess they will just try to avoid
this issue (Crimea) in future,” Bekeshkina told the Kyiv Post.
