French companies in Russia: “Leaving often means leaving everything in the hands of Putin and his oligarch friends”

Speaking this Monday afternoon at the opening of Medef’s Meeting of French Employers (REF), the president of the employers’ union took up the defense of French companies that chose to maintain their activities in Russia. “As in any war, nothing is simple and nothing is black or white,” Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux said from the Longchamp racecourse in Paris.

“Let’s not be naive”

“Russian aggression [contre l’Ukraine] forces us to choose a side […] and we must choose the field of freedom, that of the Ukrainian people”, assured Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux. But “let’s not be naive, let’s not flatter ourselves, it is not the sanctions that will change the policy or the regime” of Russia. he said, citing Iran, North Korea and Cuba.

There is no way back

However, these sanctions “send a strong signal,” he added, because they show that “our values ​​are not negotiable.” “Perhaps some of you [entrepreneurs, ndlr] I hope we can go back, that basically everything is a bad dream that will end soon. I’m afraid it’s an illusion.”