Dell Is Totally Done With Russia

Dell has reportedly ceased all operations in Russia due to the invasion of Ukraine.

The company halted sales(Opens in a new window) in Russia in March. Now a Dell spokesperson has told Reuters(Opens in a new window) that it “closed our offices and ceased all Russian operations” in mid-August, too, and that “the vast majority of Dell’s R&D centre specialists and support engineers in St Petersburg and Moscow have already received job offers with competitive pay from Russian producers.”

Dell isn’t the first to leave because of this situation, and it probably won’t be the last, either.

Many companies stopped doing business in Russia following the invasion of Ukraine in February. Some have left the country entirely in the intervening months—Intel suspended operations in Russia in April, as did Nokia, and IBM laid off its Russian employees in June—while others have taken a wait-and-see approach due to ongoing political tensions.

These developments, along with US sanctions, have forced Russia to reconsider(Opens in a new window) its dependence on foreign companies. Regulators within the country have also issued fines to Twitch, Pinterest, Airbnb, and UPS over data storage violations; Google was issued a $370 million fine because “YouTube deliberately promotes the dissemination of misleading information.”

That means both the US and the Russian government are making it increasingly difficult for American companies to do business in the country. It won’t come as a surprise when more tech companies—to say nothing of non-tech businesses like McDonald’s, Starbucks(Opens in a new window), and the like—follow Dell in deciding that maintaining a presence in Russia isn’t worth the hassle.