Well, not entirely. Since 2010 Cadbury has belonged first to Kraft then after 2012, to Mondelēz International, a US-based confectionery giant that still chooses to operate factories and pay taxes within Russia. In Ukraine Mondelēz was designated, in 2023, an “
Its chairman and chief executive, Dirk Van de Put, prefers to think of the Mondelēz mission as “empowering people to snack right”. “Snacking made right” appears on every Mondelēz International website, including its Russian language one. “I remain humbled to advance the important work of Snacking Made Right for generations to come,”a recent statement, which reported that the related practice of “mindful snacking” is “being applied across our entire portfolio”. Including at Cadbury, presumably.
Given the risk informed consumers will conclude, having taken Van de Put’s slogan to heart, that it can’t be right to snack on products from a company whose taxes could have helped fund the killing of tens of thousands of Ukrainians, the abduction of their children and obliteration of their homes, a cheerful online history of Cadbury dwelling on the vision of the founding family, is probably right to omitlandmarks of the last few years.
Van de Put has even argued, as if sales in Russia would amount to a humanitarian project, that biscuits were a 'breakfast item'reported, with another exercise in cultural vandalism: the bombing of the Derzhprom, a historic, Unesco-listed building in Kharkiv, which had survived the Second World War. Another report brought to light extensive,website that tracks companies still refusing to leave Russia, more than 1,000 having now done so, Mondelēz is categorised as “buying time”.
Step forward, then, Van de Put and his mindful snacking, a technique, the company suggests, to “be practised anywhere, anytime and by anyone”. The Cadbury Christmas range offers a host of opportunities for supporters of Ukraine to mindfully decide if they want to snack, especially in the season of peace and goodwill, on products distributed by a multinational whose tax revenues, however far away, are potentially funding the Russian invasion.