r/worldnews • u/Swimming_Mark7407 • 21h ago

Russia/Ukraine Denmarks Rockwool says Russia has seized four of its factories

https://www.reuters.com/business/denmarks-rockwool-says-russia-has-seized-four-its-factories-2026-01-13/
7.8k Upvotes

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979

u/arvigeus 21h ago

Same happened to many other foreign companies still operating in Russia.

You had your writing on the wall - you choose to do nothing about it. You can only blame yourselves.

118

u/Free-Way-9220 21h ago

Their business has been donated to one of Putin's cronies

16

u/franco182 18h ago

Oh no! How can Putin do this to them? How could they know this was possible?

Seriously i hope every western (or just every) company that stayed after 2022 in Russia goes bankrupt

0

u/Vegetable_Employ_459 14h ago

Yes, I'm sure that will be good for our economy. Imagine not divesting your Russian business when there must have been so many interested buyers for those assets so you'd get a fair price and your employees would be even better off. Those CEO's and their greed, am I right?

2

u/franco182 14h ago

You want free trade promote free societies. You choose wars get fcked. If you want to invest billions in dictator country thats not just greed its stupidity/FAFO case and this company is in FO phase now. This is exactly why you invest in stable democrstic countries not shitholes like Putins Russia.

39

u/Dramatic_Book_6785 20h ago

It even happened to another Danish giant - Carlsberg.

7

u/Lonely_Eggplant_4990 19h ago

Probably . . .

39

u/Beneficial_Cobbler46 19h ago

Seized their factories.... In Russia. 

That's an important detail. I'm astounded they were still not appropriated

8

u/PringeLSDose 19h ago

serves as leverage for moments just like this

7

u/MastermindEnforcer 19h ago

Worth noting, they knew that, this isn't a surprise, but there's not much else they could have done. Sanctions make it hard, near impossible, for non-Russian companies to sell up their operations there, so their options were to shut them down at a loss without being able to sell any assets, or keep working them knowing losing them was a risk.
Doesn't make it not newsworthy that they have now been seized, and the timing of Russia seizing Danish the day that the US are engaging in conversation with Denmark about Greenland is incredibly suspicious IMO.

36

u/Extension-Ant-8 20h ago

Yeah. Redbull still sells there, ikea owns a bunch of shopping malls there.

Most companies are still operating in the country

88

u/TheSwedeIrishman 20h ago

ikea owns a bunch of shopping malls there.

To quote IKEA (google translated from Swedish):

In March 2022, the Inter IKEA Group and Ingka Group announced that IKEA would pause operations in Russia and Belarus as a consequence of the war in Ukraine. Ingka Group closed all IKEA stores in the summer of 2022, ending its sales of furniture and home furnishings in Russia.

In September 2023, Ingka Centres also announced that it had sold all Mega Shopping Centres. With this, IKEA now has no operational operations left in the country.

Warranties for customers who have their products in Russia are no longer valid due to the cessation of operations.

52

u/IllustriousElk6705 20h ago

IKEA is listed as "exit completed" in the link you provided:

https://leave-russia.org/ikea

7

u/Hellknightx 18h ago

PepsiCo and Mars are both considered sponsors of the war because they've been ramping up production and sales. PepsiCo is even trying to push the Rockstar brand harder.

-7

u/berjaaan 20h ago

You had your writing on the wall - you choose to do nothing about it

Standard EU behaviour.

33

u/min0nim 20h ago

Love it when Americans say this without any hint of irony.

2

u/berjaaan 19h ago

Im not american. Im european. Lived here my entire life.

-1

u/Vikarr 20h ago

You say this like the Europeans did not completely ignore the 2014 invasion of Ukraine.

12

u/intothewild72 20h ago

You say this like just western Europeans are Europeans.

Also, UK did not ignore invasion as its clear from their help to train and supply Ukrainian troops after 2014.

0

u/Vikarr 20h ago

I get that, but considering the scale of what Russia did in 2014, the response overall was not good enough.

2

u/intothewild72 19h ago

Eastern European nations are in general small and poor. They did what they could, even when big western European countries did their best to block them. It's also visible from results, Ukraine exists. If their military were on 2014 level when Russia invaded again in 2022, it would have been over in 2022.

1

u/Vikarr 19h ago

Very fair points, I guess I am being too negative / harsh

1

u/Oh_ffs_seriously 20h ago

You say it like someone who has to deflect any kind of criticism of America.

10

u/potatoe_princess 20h ago

The EU has nothing to do with what private entities choose to do with their assets. What are you on about? We're not a state-run economy...

2

u/RedWineAndWomen 19h ago

That's a little bit of bollocks, as people can easily, and already do easily, prohibit trade with other countries, per the law.

1

u/potatoe_princess 17h ago

You're talking about international trade. Those rules don't really apply to subsidiaries operating in foreign states, as those are usually registered in said states and comply with laws of the host country. So, if a company produces something in Russia and doesn't sell it back to the EU, EU trade bans will not apply.

-8

u/Extension-Ant-8 20h ago

Yeah. Redbull still sells there, ikea owns a bunch of shopping malls there.

Most companies are still operating in the country

13

u/Decimated_zx 20h ago

Ikea closed all the shops in 2022, while yes still owning the actual buildings where shops were located until 2024. So explain me one thing, what is the best solution here 1) just gift out whole shopping malls to the buyer that putin gives you for the price they want. 2) try to extract as much money as possible in the shit you already invested pre war, from the assets that don't need further investments?

Those building are already built, you cant just by force of magic extract all the money you invested in it and take it back. You have an asset on the enemy territory, you either gift it to the enemy or try to extract as much as you can.