May 18

May 18 Calling Out Mondelēz

Chicago, Demonstrations, Protest, Public Declarations

“Chocolate on my fingers, icing on my lips
Sugar diabetes and blubber on my hips
I keep the night light burning in the kitchen baby
So I can go downstairs and cruise
I got them oreo creme sandwich
Chocolate covered creme filled cookie blues”

— Oreo Cookie Blues, Lonnie Mack and Stevie Ray Vaughan, from Stevie Ray Vaughan & Friends

Members of Chicago’s Ukrainian community showed up outside the offices of Mondelēz International this afternoon, calling for a boycott of the company’s brands, which include Cadbury, Chips Ahoy!, Clif Bars, Clorets, Halls, Oreos, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Ritz Crackers, Sour Patch Kids, Toblerone, Triscuits, and Wheat Thins. When Pavlo Bandriwsky, one of the community’s leader urged me to boycott Oreo Cookies, I pointed out that any decision on my part to eschew Oreo Cookies would have no effect because my doctor has already ordered me to avoid them in order to keep my A1C down.

Of course, I had to ask what Mondelēz had done to garner the ire of the Ukrainians. Oreos are hardly weapons of war. Turns out, unlike McDonalds, Starbucks, and other consumer products companies, Mondelēz did not close its Russian operations following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

According to the signage at today’s demonstration, Mondelēz paid $61 million in taxes to Russia, which equates with the cost of 315 missiles launched against Ukraine, although the signage provides no timeframe for the $61 million figure. I couldn’t find a breakout for Mondelẽz’s Russian operations in its financial statements.

According to data compiled by the Kyiv School of Economics (“KSE”), Western companies doing business in Russia generated $213.9 billion in 2022 revenue, which resulted in $3.5 billion in additional tax revenue. Using the Ukrainian ‘missile’ metric, that level of additional tax revenue equates to over 18,000 missiles.

A May 13, 2024 article in the New York Times indicates that Russia launched roughly 1,500 missiles against Ukraine from April 1, 2023 until the April 30, 2024. In terms of the numbers displayed on today’s signage, the taxes paid by Mondelẽz to Russia financed about 20% of the missiles launched against Ukraine this past year. A more interesting metric might be the number of coffins for Russian war dead that the Mondelẽz’s tax payments have covered.

Mondelēz is not the only Western company continuing its Russian operations. KSE claims that:

out of 1,387 Western companies with Russian subsidiaries at the start of the full-scale invasion, only 241 (17%) have completely exited Russia. The majority of the companies (56%) monitored by the KSE are committed to doing business in Russia.

According to a February 21, 2024 article in the Financial Times, Dirk Van de Put, Mondelēz’s chief executive said, “I don’t think [investors] morally care.” He added, “There has been no shareholder pressure whatsoever,” then noting that several European funds had asked about the Russian business, “but there was no request to leave Russia from any of our investors.”

Van de Put argued that leaving Russia doesn’t make a lot of sense, because Putin’s allies would then end up profiting from the Mondelēz assets. Several large consumer product companies have taken a different approach. McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Heineken and Starbucks each have opted to shutter Russian operations. In McDonald’s case, it sold 850 stores to a Russian buyer, who then rebranded them. Doing so was not without cost to McDonald’s shareholders. The company took a $1.4 billion charge off.

Whatever the arguments, Pavlo Bandriwsky, Vice President, Government and Community Relations of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, Illinois Division, was not a happy camper. Normally low key, Bandriwsky angrily gave Mondelẽz’s chief executive a piece of his mind as Bandriwsky stood outside Mondelēz’ Wrigley Building office:

Today—just days before the shareholder’s meeting next week, many major media outlets have picked up the story of Mondelēz putting raw profits above humanitarian concerns. We will keep the pressure up until Mondelēz voluntarily withdraws, or their company is seized by the terrorist Russian government. Doing business in a terrorist state is not a sustainable business model. Mondelẽz should know better.

Bandriwsky then yelled “Russia is a terrorist state” three times, followed by “Mondelēz—out of Russia now,” repeated three times. And he closed with a “Slava Ukraini” for good measure.

Today’s effort might have made a difference in March 2022, which says a lot more about our political environment than the merits of the Ukrainian case against Mondelēz. In the early days of its war with Russia, Ukraine was viewed as the ‘little engine that could” defeat Russia and Putin. Both Republicans and Democrats were rooting for Ukraine and willing to provide financial support, as was the population at large.

Many in the Republican Party have since changed their tune thanks to Donald J. Trump’s love of autocrats like Vladimir Putin. If elected, Trump will undoubtedly stab Ukraine in the back. The populist Trumpers will eventually come to regret their decision to back Trump when their own kids start dying in a European war brought about by Trump’s ill-advised embrace of Putin. In the meantime, the willingness of Republicans to abandon Ukraine offers cover to companies that do not want to close their Russian operations.

During the brief rally, five or six others spoke. I was particularly impressed when Lillia Popovych spoke. Overt the last 28 months, she has organized many of the Chicago-area Ukrainian marches and rallies. When Popovych was introduced, I learned that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky personally presented her with a medal for her service to Ukrainian. That means I am now just two-degrees of separation from Zelensky.

After the rally at the Wrigley Building Plaza, the group of 50 or so demonstrators marched up Michigan Avenue to Jane Byrne Park, the site of Chicago’s historic Water Tower. There they sang a Ukrainian anthem, and then thanked Congress for recently appropriating additional funds for Ukraine. They also thanked the Chicago Police Department for keeping them safe.

It wasn’t the biggest rally or march, but Chicago’s Ukrainian Community once again made its point.

[I generally don’t take positions regarding the events I cover. I make an exception for Ukrainian and anti-Putin Russian demonstrations. There is only one correct viewpoint.]

[Click on an Image to Enlarge It. The Images Are Not Necessarily in Exact Chronological Order]