Microsoft president Brad Smith wrote to Ukraine’s leader this month with a clear message: despite Kyiv’s calls for it to sever all ties with Russia, the US software behemoth would continue doing business in the country with non-sanctioned clients, including schools and hospitals.
The decision by some leading Western business technology makers – including Microsoft, German software multinational SAP SE and US giant International Business Machines Corp – to maintain operations or staff in Russia despite Ukraine’s appeals have angered their workers in several countries. SAP told Reuters it was complying with government actions and even going beyond them, and it would “welcome new sanctions currently under discussion.”
The spokesperson noted that companies had legal obligations to employees that must be fulfilled, such as paying wages. Fedorov said on Friday in a tweet, citing a conversation with SAP chief executive Christian Klein, that the company would “gradually stop supporting” products in Russia. A day earlier, SAP had said it was shutting its Russian cloud business, which two sources described as a small operation.
CEO Arvind Krishna on a March 2 call with employees had taken no sides on the war, one of the sources said. In a now-public message to workers the previous day, IBM had referred to what it described as the “deteriorating situation involving Ukraine and Russia.”