However, in the last few days, we have been besieged by bewildering evidence-free assertions, that we somehow grossly exaggerated the Russian business retreat. Last week, two European authors released
a publication claiming that only 8.5% of Western companies have actually pulled out of Russia. This study was published without supporting evidence, on the non-peer-reviewed, open-submission platform SSRN.
The headline was immediately, uncritically picked up by reporters, who rushed to publish stories that parrot the same cynical talking points as the researchers. Buttressed by a suspicious number of tweets and other social media posts from shell accounts (bearing an uncanny resemblance to disinformation bots), we were besieged by international messages angrily accusing us of inventing the Russian business retreat.
But all these journalists and critics missed an inconvenient truth: The “research” claiming only 8.5% of Western companies had actually pulled out of Russia was based on false data, as the academics’
own files blatantly reveal.
What stands out is that this is NOT a list the 1,404 Western companies as they claim but is a list of hundreds of individual PEOPLE–many of whom are Russian oligarch cronies of Putin–and hundreds of Russian companies, as evidenced
here. This blatant data fabrication is obvious the minute anyone opens the data file–most egregiously, from lines 737 to 947 of tab three. Here are some select examples of Russian individuals who were conflated with “Western companies”
www.foxnews.com
www.is.fi
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www.uusisuomi.fi
www.businessinsider.com
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www.iltalehti.fi
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