Updated

Vladimir Putin signed a decree placing the Russian subsidiaries of France's Auchan, Switzerland's Nestlé and the former Leroy Merlin chain under temporary management by a company called L.E.V. Management. None of the three companies had fully exited the Russian market after the full-scale invasion, and the move is part of a broader Kremlin campaign to seize control of Western assets remaining in Russia. The decree extends a pattern of state-appointed management takeovers of foreign firms' Russian operations, a tool the Kremlin has increasingly used against Western companies seen as insufficiently committed to leaving the Russian market since 2022.