With the outbreak of war in Ukraine, many multinationals have announced that they would scale back, suspend operations or withdraw completely from Russia. However, The Financial Times points out that the execution of such promises is more complicated than expected. Among many issues, one of them is that suspended operations could be seized by the Russian state. Alberto Alemanno, law professor at HEC Paris, comments that companies are currently "paying a lot of lawyers to assess what they can do about it in terms of protecting their investment."