Wrestling With a Russian Exit

A list of companies that have left Russia highlights the economic costs of sanctions

- Robb Mandelbaum

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld woke up to a bit of encouraging news one-day last summer: He was officially an enemy of the state. The Russian state, that is. A professor at the Yale School of Management, he’d inserted himself into that country’s war with Ukraine by creating a global list of foreign companies that trade in Russia. Sorted by the extent to which businesses have retreated from Russia since the invasion, the list assigns grades to almost 1,400 of them, from an A for complete withdrawal to an F for what Sonnenfeld calls “digging in.” His directory quickly became a cudgel against companies stubbornly holding fast and counting their rubles—and a long stick to poke the Russian bear. It’s also elevated a mild-mannered business professor famous in management circles into an unusually influential role in the campaign to bring President Vladmir Putin’s would-be resurrected Russian Empire to heel.

Now Sonnenfeld found himself among 25  American policymakers and academics added to a Russian “stop list” who are barred from entering the country. First Lady Jill Biden led the list, but Sonnenfeld notes, with a wry smile, that as the sixth name, “I’m higher than Mitch McConnell.”

Sonnenfeld is careful not to explicitly articulate a point of view on whether companies should stay in or leave Russia, but his work speaks for itself. “Our position isn’t overtly one about advocacy,” he says—just before acknowledging, with a slight laugh, that “it might subtly be so, when you’re listing companies and grading them.” In conversation, he calls the executives who’ve pulled out of Russia “courageous.”