LONDON, May 28. /TASS/. Hundreds of Western groups have remained in Russia despite saying they planned to leave over the Ukraine conflict earlier and they continue operations in the country as bureaucratic obstacles increase and consumer activity rebounds, the Financial Times wrote.

Moscow has gradually raised the cost of corporate departure, imposing a discount on assets from unfriendly countries sold to Russian buyers and an "exit tax," the paper said.

"Many European companies have found themselves really between a rock and a hard place," one executive working with western companies in the country was quoted as saying. "They said they’d leave. They were presented with a choice of buyers that were unacceptable to them," he said.

Overall, more than 2,100 multinationals have stayed in Russia since 2022, including Avon Products, Air Liquide and Reckitt, Unilever, Nestle and Philip Morris, compared with about 1,600 international companies that have either quit the market or scaled back operations, the newspaper said.

Mondelez’s chief executive Dirk Van De Put told the FT earlier that that the corporation had no plans to leave Russia, adding that it received no pressure from shareholders to stop doing business with Russia.

There has been a noticeable change in sentiment among top management of Western countries as they ask themselves whether they really have to leave Russia, the Financial Times wrote. "Some of these companies have built four, five factories over 30 years. They’re not going to sell that for a 90 per cent discount," the publication said.