Two former European leaders have quit the boards of Russian companies in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Finland’s former prime minister Esko Aho said he had resigned as a director of Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, while the former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi announced he had quit the board of Russia’s largest car-sharing service, Delimobil.
Their departures highlighted the pressure on western business leaders and politicians to reassess their ties with Russian companies after Moscow’s full-scale attack on its neighbour.
Aho, who was an independent director of Sberbank, had been a member of the lender’s supervisory board since 2016. He told the Finnish newspaper Turun Sanomat on Thursday morning that he had “initiated measures to withdraw from the board”.
A page on Sberbank’s website showing Aho’s board positions was updated on Thursday. It stated he was “considered to have retired from the supervisory board … upon a personal request”.
Italian media reported that Renzi, who remains the leader of the Italia Viva party, had stepped down from the board of directors of Delimobil.
The former prime minister had taken up the position last August at the car-sharing firm, which was founded in 2015 by the Italian businessman Vincenzo Trani, the president of the Italian-Russian chamber of commerce.
The resignations will increase the criticism of prominent former European politicians who have not cut their ties with Russian corporations, including the former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder. At the beginning of February, Schröder was nominated to join the board of the Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom.
Schröder, who led Germany from 1998 to 2005, remains the chairman of the Russian state energy firm Rosneft, and also sits on the shareholders’ committee at Nord Stream, the company behind the controversial gas pipeline linking Russia and Germany.
The former Social Democrat chancellor has come in for frequent criticism since leaving office for his close ties with Russia, and his personal friendship with Vladimir Putin.
Schröder issued a statement on Thursday calling for caution in the use of sanctions against Russia, saying they could endanger a return to peace and dialogue.
“Much has been said in recent years about mistakes and failures in the relationship between the west and Russia. And there were many mistakes – on both sides,” Schröder wrote on his page on the networking website LinkedIn.
“But Russia’s security interests also do not justify the use of military means.”
Schröder sits on the board of Rosneft alongside the former Austrian foreign affairs minister Karin Kneissl, as well as western business leaders including the current and former chief executives of BP, Bernard Looney and Bob Dudley.
The London-headquartered oil company BP owns almost a fifth of Rosneft.