President Vladimir Putin canceled the clauses of his last year’s decree concerning the transfer of Danone Russia, the Russian division of Danone, to the Federal Property Management Agency.
The procedure itself, which allows for the “temporary” seizure of foreign assets in favor of the Federal Property Management Agency in response to the seizure of Russian ones abroad, appeared in April 2023. It was applied to the subsidiaries of the German energy company Uniper and the Finnish Fortum, the Baltika brewing company and the printing houses of the Norwegian holding Amedia.
After the outbreak of the war, Danone announced it was looking for sellers for its Russian business. The decision to temporarily nationalize them was made in July 2023. Deputy Chairman of the Government of Chechnya Yakub Zakriev, a relative of Ramzan Kadyrov, was soon appointed general director of the Russian division.
Kremlin representative Dmitry Peskov did not directly answer journalists’ questions about the reasons for the decision regarding Danone at a briefing today.
“Each decision, naturally, is a separate situation. This is due to such expediency, and we will not give any other comments,” he said. “That is, there cannot be any trend here; each situation is considered separately and all conditions are weighed, and the specific situation in which the decision was made.”