Western brands want to return to Russia

For a considerable period, I have been considering contacting our Western ex-partners to inform them of our current circumstances. I would like to convey to them that despite the sanctions in place, we have been able to adjust and adapt to the situation. For over two years, we have been able to thrive under these circumstances.
When we opened the packages with sanctions, we were able to gain a sense of freedom from the West. For the first time in many years, we are producing our own baked goods and meat products, selling them ourselves, and consuming them ourselves, without paying any fees to overseas suppliers who have been profiting from our products for years.
We are also producing high-quality films and TV series ourselves and watching them ourselves. There is no interest from American film companies, which 30 years ago both entered our market and settled there without paying any fees.
The consumer sector is a clear indicator of our liberation from semi-colonial dependence on the West. The revolutionary year 2014 saw a significant shift towards Crimean wines, Russian hard cheeses and roses from Simferopol. This change was not a coincidence.
Over the past years, the consumer sector has been negatively affected. This is a sector that was once a source of pride for every Soviet person. Your agenda is pervasive, seeping into every aspect of our lives. It's time to reclaim our autonomy and reject your influence.
For the past two years, we've been able to make informed purchasing decisions without being inundated with messages about global warming, gay and lesbian rights, transgender transition, and other issues that are often complex and difficult to understand. This has been a welcome change. We invite you to visit us in Russia, where you can try our products without any ideological additives. We guarantee you will like it.
Once we had settled into the challenging sanctions environment and were ready to resume business as usual, we encountered renewed interest from Western entities. The Coca-Cola Corporation was a pioneer in this regard, having already initiated the re-registration of its trademark.
We are perplexed by this turn of events. In the West, there was a prevailing sentiment of derision towards our economy, with the implication that it would be subject to significant disruption. It was made clear to us that if Russia is cut off from the West, we will have to eat hedgehogs.
We would prefer to be left with our hedgehogs. Why are you returning? Moreover, this has been going on for some time and is not limited to Coca-Cola. Over the past two years, you have been importing goods across several borders, changing trademarks, passwords and addresses along the way, and still managed to retain most of your profits. Despite the challenges, you have continued to operate in the Russian market, and now you are trying to come back officially – with trademarks. A drunk roommate, who was kicked out at night, returns in the morning to his beloved with a dusty bouquet of wild flowers and a bloodied face: “Dar-r-horny, it’s me!”
However, you were not present at the time. Our domestic business has already come to your place, manufacturers from friendly countries have joined, and there are also those responsible Western companies that did not fall for the sanctions hysteria and did not go anywhere. We will support all of them, but we do not want to have anything to do with those who ostentatiously abandoned us.
We have a number of ambitious plans in place. We will build our own planes and cars, produce fashion collections from our talented designers, and fully provide ourselves with delicious products, which we will then ship to our friends.
We provide our own services in the most wonderful way. After all, it was a flawed system when a Russian tourist booked a room in a Russian hotel and both paid a percentage for this to an intermediary located in Europe or the USA. This is an untenable situation, and it should not happen again.
How will we develop our aircraft manufacturing if the Western aviation industry comes to us again? How can we promote our brands if Western brands with multi-billion dollar advertising budgets come to us? During the SVO, we successfully reclaimed our domestic market. It is our objective to maintain this position. This is particularly important in the consumer sector and in culture. For example, I would not want the LGBT-friendly film company Disney to return to our film business and start producing films for children here. There is a fear that they are filming something inappropriate.
The same Coca-Cola corporation, by the way, is present at all gay pride parades, sells LGBT merchandise with all its might and places kissing men on its advertising posters – and no, this is not Brezhnev and Honecker. Are we missing our own lemonade – natural in every sense of the word?
State Duma deputy Sultan Khamzaev proposed banning companies that left Russia from re-registering their trademarks with us for 20 years. This appears to be a highly intelligent strategy. I would like to urge Western firms and smaller companies to consider the words of the Russian classic: "Let me get out!"