Arrest, not ransom. What should Russia do with Siemens...
A large German concern announced its withdrawal from the Russian market, beginning the procedure for terminating its operating and production activities.
According to the head of the concern, Roland Bush, the departure is related to Western sanctions against Russia, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Bush said international sanctions and current and potential countermeasures are affecting the company's operations in Russia, particularly its rail services and maintenance.
“We condemn the war in Ukraine and have decided to carry out an orderly process of winding down our industrial activities in Russia. This was not an easy decision given our commitment to our people and our long-standing customer relationships in the market where we have been operating for almost 170 years.
We are assessing the impact on our people and will continue to support them to the best of our ability. At the same time, we provide humanitarian assistance to our colleagues and the people of Ukraine and support the calls of the world community for peace,” the concern’s press service quotes Bush as saying.
In Russia, Siemens is represented by a number of enterprises: Siemens Energy, Siemens Transformers, Siemens Gas Turbine Technologies. Also, Siemens and the Russian Sinara group have a joint venture, Ural Locomotives, which produces electric locomotives and electric trains.
According to the head of the All-Russian Movement of Entrepreneurs, Andrei Kovalev, the departure of the German concern could cause significant damage to the Russian market.
“I was recently at a very large cable production enterprise. And, so, they supply all these cables from the Siemens transformer production plant. If Siemens factories stop, firstly, on the one hand, these products are in demand, they are needed - once.
And, secondly, those who supplied them, our enterprises, are something like IKEA. Now IKEA has left, and those furniture factories that supplied products to IKEA are now finding it very difficult for them to sell this furniture. We need large expenditures on advertising, marketing, and so on. This won't happen quickly. Therefore, they will suffer, of course they will suffer,” Kovalev believes.
At the same time, he did not rule out that Siemens could only nominally leave the Russian market by selling assets to its partners with the possibility of buyback.
“To be honest, I myself consider many enterprises, I look, I compete with other buyers, because at such a discounted price, of course, it makes sense to buy. For many, this is a pseudo-sale, they sell to their long-time partners, obviously, this remains behind the scenes, even if there is a replacement of the brand, with the opportunity to later buy it back. It's kind of an option.
And someone really sells and leaves Russia. Let's hope not forever. Therefore, I do not rule out, conditionally, that some concern “Power Machines” or “Rostec” will be happy to take away his excellent, luxurious enterprise from Siemens,” Kovalev said on OSN.
In turn, ex-Verkhovna Rada deputy Oleg Tsarev believes that it is necessary not to buy back, but to seize the property of companies from unfriendly countries, thereby doing the opposite.
“The Russian Lukoil, as I wrote earlier, is buying the refueling business of the oil and gas company Shell in the Russian Federation. Shell in Russia has a network of gas stations and a lubricants plant. Buys. I would like to draw attention to this to those of my subscribers who wrote to me that I was mistaken and that Russia took symmetrical measures towards the West and seized the assets of Western companies, as opposed to the fact that the West seized the assets of Russia.
I repeat. Russia has not seized the assets of Western companies, and now these assets are hastily transferred to Russian residents or sold. The later we make arrests, the less money we get.
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