Three months have gone since the Russian invasion in Ukraine started and the war is continuing. While Ukrainians are dealing with the devastation, Russians are starting to face the effects of sanctions imposed by the West and of the exodus of Western companies and brands.
At the moment Russia is the most sanctioned country in the world and around 1,000 foreign companies have stopped their operations there. One of the latest is McDonald's: after pausing operations in the country due to its invasion of Ukraine, the multinational fast food corporation announced this week that it will sell its business in Russia. Besides, several companies including Disney, Warner and Sony stopped releasing films in Russia, so that at the moment cinemas in the country are re-running old Hollywood blockbusters or Chinese action movies.
This week luxury stores in the UK (including Harrods) informed Russian nationals who reside in Russia of a spending cap of 300 pounds after a fresh set of government sanctions. The decision follows Chanel's that, to comply with the sanctions, last month halted sales of its clothes, perfume, accessories and other items (all products valued at over 300 euros) to Russian customers abroad if they plan to take the products back to their home country.
In their own country Russians will have increasingly limited choices when they go out shopping as they may find only Russian products rather than Western ones, but the consequences of the war in Ukraine will keep on spreading at different levels, politically and economically isolating Russia.
Besides, the country is isolating itself also culturally: in March the government in Russia blocked the access to Netflix, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Apple and foreign news outlets and passed a law that may land people spreading "false information" about the invasion in Ukraine or calling "war" what the Kremlin calls "special military operation", to 15 years in prison. This meant that many publications stopped operating in the country.
Condé Nast closed its Russian franchise in April - shutting down Vogue, GQ, GQ Style, Tatler, Glamour, Glamour Style Book and Architectural Digest - as a result of the war and of Russia's censorship laws.
Before that, in March, American conglomerate Hearst Corporation announced it was terminated its licensing agreements of its owned brands Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan and Men's Health. The magazines therefore had to change name on the Roskomnadzor (Federal Service for the Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Communications) registry.
As a consequence, Cosmopolitan, Esquire and Men's Health are now known in Russia as The Voice, Rules of Life and Men Today. All media are registered as print media but also as online versions.
Cosmopolitan was the first international women's magazine to be published in post-Soviet Russia in 1994. A few weeks ago, announcing its change of name on its Instagram page former Cosmopolitan Russia claimed The Voice is "a portal for active girls and women who can independently change their lives and the world around them (...) the main thing is that we still have answers to any of your questions and there are absolutely no taboo topics!"
The new name of the magazine is a bit puzzling (The Voice of whom?), especially considering Russian censorship laws. The announcement about answering readers' questions and talking about taboo topics is also almost hilarious. The war in Ukraine is indeed a taboo topic in Russia, will The Voice be writing about it. Well, probably no.
Russia's efforts to copy banned social media platforms and Western products with dedicated trademark applications have been met with ridicule and even Andrei Klishas, a senator from Putin's United Russia party, admitted this week that the country’s import substitution programme is failing.
But the problem with modern magazines in Russia is not just about their contents and the possibility of substituting them with another product or of changing their name and keeping on publishing them. It is actually also a practical problem: major software brands including Microsoft ceased operations in Russia and the government in Russia blocked the access to Instagram and Facebook.
All magazines employ specific softwares for their design and layout, and all publications need social media for advertising purposes. With Western software and tech companies that have been pulling out of Russia, a ban on the purchase of foreign software for information infrastructure issued by the Russian government in March, with social media blocked and with the rising prices of ink and paper, producing a magazine in Russia will become not just tricky but practically impossible.
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