Whether multinational companies are morally obliged to leave an aggressor state such as Russia simply because they operate there; it answers with the theory of complicity and the theory of sanctions, both framed by just war theory.

After Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, a normative debate began over whether multinationals should stop doing business in Russia. A Yale team led by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld compiled a list of companies that stayed, the so-called "Hall of Shame". The public mood is captured by quotes like "No business can be right in a war that's wrong."

Brühl (Journal of Business Ethics, 2025) examines this demand with three lenses:

• Just war theory: is the war unjust, and what follows for companies?
• Theory of complicity (Mittäterschaft): when does doing business make a company a participant in wrongdoing?
• Theory of sanctions: what do legitimate, state-imposed sanctions require of companies?

His conclusion is that companies must comply with legitimate targeted sanctions, but a blanket call for all of them to leave is not morally required and can itself be harmful.

As an unjust war: an unprovoked aggression against a sovereign state, accompanied by human-rights violations against civilians. This supports the claim that companies there operate in a state committing grave, state-organised wrongs and have a moral obligation to stop and leave.

Two principles of just war theory do the work:

• Defending a state's sovereignty against an aggressor is the most important just cause for war. Ukraine has been a sovereign state since 1991 and posed no real threat to Russia, so the attack counts as unprovoked aggression. Defending one's territory also makes it morally justified to fight the combatants of the unjust side.
• The principle of discrimination requires belligerents to distinguish between soldiers and civilians and to attack only soldiers. Reports of rape, looting, targeted killing of civilians and missile strikes on hospitals show this principle being violated.

Hence the starting position of the debate: companies in Russia do business in a country that wages an unjust war and commits severe, state-organised human-rights violations. That is the basis for the demand that they ought to leave.