If Companies Suspend Exports To, Imports From, Services For The Russian Federation… They Should Be Public About That Decision. No Hedging.

A note about United States companies and their commercial relationships with the Russian Federation.  If providing a product or service to the Russian Federation, this is the moment to suspend those product or service offerings.  Doing so absent sharing publicly on Internet platforms- web site, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., is uninspiring.  Perhaps, the decision to be public or remain secretive is due to generational differences.  There is no justification for what the Russian Federation has done to Ukraine.  None.  Zero.  

Just as those in the twenties, thirties, and forties often push those in the fifties, sixties, and seventies to be more aware, more conscience of issues that impact them, today is a moment for those in their twenties, thirties, and forties to be elastic in their thinking.   

Young people, whose familiarity with history generally does not date past the advent of the iPhone or for those younger Facebook and Twitter.  Siting in a library turning the page of a book is as unwelcomed as making payments using printed currency and coins.  These generations need to take the word of those whose living reference points include the U.S.S.R. and Berlin Wall and President Nixon’s visit to China… what is happening in Ukraine is important and requires a public stance. 

If a company does something and does not tell anyone about it- does not want anyone to know because the company is hedging its bets, is this a company that truly has the ethos that it may claim to have- in public. 

If a company takes a decision to suspend product or services offerings to the Russian Federation, then important, instructive, to demonstrate the same conviction, the same courage, that inspired the decision- the 44 million citizens of Ukraine.  A decision unshared… may be defined as failure of leadership.    

Young people often say to old people that “We don’t get it.”  For young people, taking a position on Ukraine is “getting it.”