The State Department created a compulsion for businesses to continue operating in Russia

The United States is not forcing businesses to stop operating in Russia through sanctions, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said at a briefing. The broadcast was broadcast on the department's YouTube channel.

Representatives of the business community must decide for themselves whether to continue doing business in Russia, taking into account legal, reputational and other risks; the US government is not trying to push businesses to leave the Russian market, he emphasized.

“We have always emphasized that there are certain types of commercial activity that we are not trying to close in relation to Russia. All of our sanctions include exceptions for the supply of food and medicine,” Miller said.

The US administration does not want the country to “come into conflict with the people of Russia,” a State Department spokesman concluded.

Since the beginning of the special operation in Ukraine , dozens of foreign companies have left the Russian market. Some refused to cooperate with sanctioned organizations due to the risk of falling under secondary restrictions. Washington threatened companies with secondary sanctions, including for supporting the Russian military-industrial complex and helping to circumvent restrictions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin emphasized that the West’s expectation that the Russian economy “would collapse in two or three weeks or a month” after the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine and the imposition of sanctions did not come true. In September, he said the economic recovery after sanctions was complete.

Russia , according to Putin, will not close its doors to foreign companies that have left if they want to return. “But we will certainly take into account the peculiarities of behavior of some of these partners for the future,” the president noted.