Hundreds of companies answered the call. Politicians and activists predicted that it would help strangle the Russian economy and undermine the Kremlin’s war effort.
President Vladimir V. Putin had other plans.
Mr. Putin has turned the exits of major Western companies into a windfall for Russia’s loyal elite and the state itself. He has forced companies wishing to sell to do so at fire-sale prices. He has limited sales to buyers anointed by Moscow. Sometimes he has seized firms outright.
A New York Times investigation traced how Mr. Putin has turned an expected misfortune into an enrichment scheme. Western companies that have announced departures have declared more than $103 billion in losses since the start of the war, according to a Times analysis of financial reports. Mr. Putin has squeezed companies for as much of that wealth as possible by dictating the terms of their departure.
He has also subjected those exits to ever-increasing taxes, generating at least $1.25 billion in the past year for Russia’s war chest.
No private deal is safe. The Dutch beer company Heineken, for example, found a buyer this spring and set a price. But the Russian government unilaterally rejected the deal, people close to the negotiations said, and put the company’s Russian holdings in the hands of an aerosol-packaging titan married to a former Russian senator.
In all, Mr. Putin has overseen one of the biggest transfers of wealth within Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. Huge swaths of industries — elevators, tires, industrial coatings and more — are now in the hands of increasingly dominant Russian players.
In some cases, that player is the state. Government-owned enterprises have acquired the assets of corporate giants like Ikea and Toyota. In many cases, Mr. Putin personally signs off on sales.
“These are good deals for us, for sure,” said Anton Pinsky, a prominent restaurateur who joined with a pro-Putin rapper and associates of a powerful senator to take over Starbucks. In an interview in Moscow, he downplayed the significance of his own deal but was clear about the effect of the Western departures.
“You screwed up, left it,” he said. “We picked it up inexpensively. Thank you.”
Today in Russia, a robust consumer world carries on, helping Mr. Putin maintain a sense of normalcy despite a war that has proved longer, deadlier and costlier than he predicted. Most foreign companies remain in Russia, unwilling to lose the billions they’ve invested there over decades.
