How do direct and beneficial complicity apply to companies operating in Russia?

Direct complicity covers companies that take part in the war or supply goods, services or financing that can be used for it, such as weapons, arms production or military logistics. Beneficial complicity covers companies that profit from the violations, such as by buying and reselling grain stolen from Ukrainian farmers.

• Direct: Russia is an aggressor state whose military, authorities and institutions wage war and violate human rights. Companies have a moral obligation not to take part in acts of war, and more broadly not to provide goods and services, including financing, that could be used for war or human-rights violations.
• Beneficial: the company exploits the violations for economic gain and, although it knows about them, does nothing to stop them. In an aggressor state, advantages arise when state institutions expropriate assets in the invaded country and pass them on for sale. A company that buys and resells grain Russia has taken from Ukraine profits from human-rights violations and becomes complicit.