PHILADELPHIA — Trustees of Pennsylvania's largest state-funded pension fund, PSERS, voted unanimously to "take all necessary action" to dump up to $300 million it has invested in Russia and Belarus to protest Russia's invasion, from bases in both countries, of neighboring Ukraine.
The move — involving about 0.4% of the total assets of the Public School Employees' Retirement System — is in response to what board chairman Christopher Santa Maria called "the terrible military campaign being inflicted on [Ukraine] by Russia and Belarus."
"This is barbaric," said state Rep. Frank Ryan, R.-Lebanon, the board vice chair, and a retired Marine Corps reserve officer who said he had served with Ukrainian forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said the Russian artillery attacks on Ukrainian cities are "just pure barbarism, targeting civilians."
