Yevgeny Shumilkin is going back to work on Sunday. To prepare, he pulled the familiar “M” off what had been his McDonald’s shirt and covered the “M” on his McDonald’s jacket with a Russian flag patch.
“It will be the same buns,” promised Mr. Shumilkin, who maintains the equipment at a restaurant in Moscow. “Just under a different name.”
McDonald’s restaurants are reopening in Russia this weekend, but without the Golden Arches. After the American fast-food giant pulled out this spring to protest President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a Siberian oil mogul bought its 840 Russian stores. Because almost all of the ingredients came from inside the country, he said, the restaurants could keep on serving much of the same food.
The gambit might just work — underscoring the Russian economy’s surprising resilience in the face of the one of the most intense barrages of sanctions ever meted out by the West. Three and a half months into the war, it has become clear that the sanctions — and the torrent of Western companies voluntarily leaving Russia — have failed to completely dismantle the economy or set off a popular backlash against Mr. Putin.
Russia spent much of Mr. Putin’s 22 years in power integrating into the world economy. Unraveling business ties so large and so interwoven, it turns out, is not easy.
To be sure, the effects of the sanctions will be deep and broad, with the consequences only beginning to play out. Living standards in…
