Bosses of the France-based Mulliez group, which runs high-profile chains such as Leroy Merlin, Decathlon and Auchan, were coming under increasing pressure on Wednesday as social media activist groups highlighted their continuing trading in Russia.
The social rights collective Sleeping Giants France posted a plea to Mulliez chiefs from Ukrainian employees at a Leroy Merlin store in a Kyiv shopping centre, which was bombed in an attack killing eight people.
"The tension is mounting between the Mulliez group and its branches in Ukraine," it tweeted. "Leroy Merlin in Ukraine is demanding the end to its operations in Russia."
The Ukrainian army posted a message commenting on the irony of operating in Russia.
🔥 La tension monte entre le groupe #Mulliez et ses branches ukrainiennes. Après #Auchan #Ukraine qui demandait des explications à la maison mère, #LeroyMerlin Ukraine exige l'arrêt des activités en #Russie (les taxes participent au budget russe et financent l'invasion). https://t.co/WcT7iYNOnW pic.twitter.com/ZfF7K1kUeF
— Sleeping Giants FR (@slpng_giants_fr) March 21, 2022
Leroy Merlin, the home improvement and gardening retailer, boasts more than 100 outlets in Russia. Auchan, one of France’s largest supermarket operators, employs just over 41,000 people across 311 stores in Russia.
Decathlon, which specialises in sports wear, has 60 stores.
On 14 March, a dozen activists from the EELV green party held a protest in front of Auchan's headquarters in Croix, northern France, calling for the group to stop operating in Russia.
LEROY MERLIN became the first company in the world to finance the bombing of its own stores and killing its own employees.
— Defence of Ukraine (@DefenceU) March 21, 2022
Inhumane, harrowing greed. #IsolateRussia #StopRussianTerrorism pic.twitter.com/79PYZA9Zvg
Aid
A spokesman for Auchan said the company stood beside Ukrainians by keeping stores open and providing humanitarian aid.
"We have 2,500 employees who have been in Russia since 2006 and we have to ask ourselves whether we should let these people go overnight," a Leroy Merlin spokesman told the French newspaper Le Parisien.
The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who will address French deputies in the National Assembly on Wednesday afternoon via a video link from Kyiv, has criticised companies for their dealings in Russia.
Speaking to a rally outside the Swiss parliament in Berne last Saturday, Zelensky singled out the food giant Nestle.
Anger
"The company's slogan is good food, good life," he said.
"Business works in Russia even though our children are dying and our cities are being destroyed.
"The money of the people who unleashed this war is in your banks. Help fight this. So that their funds are frozen."
Nestle, whose Russian business accounts for 2 percent of its overall sales, maintains it only sells essential products and turns no profit in the country.
According to a list compiled by Yale University professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, 400 companies companies have withdrawn or suspended operations in Russia since the Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered his country's armed forces into Ukraine.
Boycott
Last week, Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister, said sanctions pressure should be increased on Russia and called for a global boycott of international companies that have kept their operations open in Russia.
But while European countries continue to buy oil and gas from Russia, a boycott appears difficult to enforce.
Geoffroy Roux de Bezieux, head of France’s employers’ group Medef, stressed that companies were staying in Russia despite its invasion of Ukraine as they had a responsibility to their staff and the population.
“We follow the recommendations of our government which is not asking companies to close down," he told French broadcaster BFM TV.
