- Moscow’s mayor says 200,000 Russians are likely to be out of work in the city.
- Hundreds of Western companies have distanced themselves from Russia, leading to a shortage of jobs.
- Some global companies have pledged to continue paying their local workers, though it’s unclear for how long.
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Moscow’s mayor said Monday that hundreds of thousands of city dwellers could lose their jobs if Western companies shut down or withdraw from Russia.
“According to our estimates, about 200,000 people are at risk of losing their jobs,” Mayor Sergei Sobyanin wrote in an official blog post.
In the post, Sobyanin said Moscow had approved a 3.36 billion ruble, or about $41 million, employment support program that would provide temporary jobs or training for the unemployed.
Sobyanin wrote that around 58,000 employees are expected to benefit from the program, stressing that Russia will provide a monthly child allowance and loans for small and medium-sized businesses.
Sobyanin’s comments come as Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to deny that Western sanctions are affecting Russia’s economy.
“We can now say with confidence that such a (sanctions) policy towards Russia has failed,” he said on Monday. “The strategy of economic blitzkrieg didn’t work out. In addition, the initiators themselves didn’t get away with the sanctions.”
According to the Yale School of Management, more than 750 companies have publicly announced that they will, to some extent, halt their operations in Russia since the invasion of Ukraine began.
Some companies have pledged to continue paying their Russian workers while they are shut down in the country, though it’s unclear how long they intend to maintain their support.
McDonald’s, one of the first major companies to pull out of Russia, said its store closures in the country are costing the company $50 million a month as it keeps its roughly 62,000 local workers on the payroll. Some of its locations are still open because the franchisees who own and operate those restaurants have refused to close, Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti reported.
Sobyanin’s post showed that Moscow is still grappling with a long list of crises. City authorities will discuss over the next two weeks how the capital will maintain its stockpiles of medicines without imports and how it will keep its hospitality industry alive, he wrote.
“There is still a lot to be done, the results of which will only appear in a few years,” wrote Sobyanin.