Paris ‘pressured’ Ukraine to stop shaming French firms in Russia
France and China have allegedly put pressure on Ukraine to take down its online name-and-shame list of foreign companies still doing business in Russia.
The ‘Sponsors of War’ list names 18 EU firms and 14 Chinese ones.
It includes French retailers Auchan and Leroy Merlin, cosmetics firm Yves Rocher, and food-processing company Bonduelle — all of which have remained active in Russia despite its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The website, which is run by Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP), also details foreign components being used in Russian-made weapons and over €2.5bn of artworks stolen from Ukraine by Russia, to try and prevent the art being sold on the art market.
"Most of the pressure to take down the website came from China, but also France," said Oleksandr Novikov, who was the NACP director until 15 January.
"This was very strange for me because setting up the NACP was one of the requirements of the European Union and the main criteria for creating such an agency was its independence," he said, referring to EU-Ukraine talks on enlargement.
"It’s also surprising because [French president Emmanuel] Macron has been so supportive of Ukraine in public", Novikov added.
"Keeping this information public is vital for our fight against Russian aggression — it’s an important tool for journalists as well as Western sanctions authorities," he also said.
Kyiv’s online ‘name-and-shame’ list has no legal authority, beyond keeping the issue in the public domain.
Current NACP staff were not authorised to speak on the record, citing the sensitivity of the issue.
The French and Chinese embassies in Kyiv were contacted for comment but didn’t immediately reply.
Novikov added that one option being considered by Ukrainian authorities was to transfer management of the data from NACP to Ukraine’s military intelligence.
But it was uncertain if the website would stay accessible to the public or media if that was the case.
A second Ukrainian source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the website could be pulled offline later on Friday.
Ukrainian sources also said France had threatened to withhold EU military assistance and block future EU sanctions if the NACP didn’t comply.
China had threatened to take trade measures, such as curbing imports of Ukrainian food, Ukrainian contacts said.
Most other EU firms on the ‘Sponsors of War’ list were German and Italian.
The list had earlier caused controversy when Hungary and Greece, in May last year, threatened to block EU sanctions on Russia unless Kyiv delisted Hungary’s OTP Bank and Greek shipping firms Delta Tankers and Dynamo Tankers.
Austria also threatened to block new EU sanctions on Russia in December if Kyiv did not delist its Raiffeisen Bank International(RBI), which made €1.3bn profit in Russia last year.
OTP Bank and Hungary got its way.
But the Austrian and Greek firms were only partly delisted — their names still appeared on the website on Friday, but details of the NACP allegations were blurred out.
"There’s been a long discussion between the Ukrainian authorities on how to deal with this list, starting from the first blockage of the EU sanctions packages [by Hungary and Greece]," a third Ukrainian source said.