RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Cisco Systems will fully exit Russia months after stopping business operations, according to a statement shared on the company’s website that is dated Thursday.
“We strongly and unequivocally condemn the unjustified war, and the violence that has been unleashed upon innocent civilians,” the company’s webpage reads.
The company, which has a campus in Research Triangle Park and whose CEO, Chuck Robbins, is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will also leave Belarus, according to the statement.
“We have continued to closely monitor the war in Ukraine,” the statement reads. “We have now made the decision to begin an orderly wind-down of our business in Russia and Belarus.”
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The “wind-down”
Earlier this year, in March, the company published a letter signed by Robbins that said that the company would stop “all business operations, including sales and services, in Russia and Belarus for the foreseeable future.” That letter appears on the same webpage as Thursday’s announcement, along with an FAQ that notes that the priority for the publicly-traded firm is the safety of its employees.
“We are focused on ensuring impacted employees in Russia and Belarus are treated with respect and have our support through this transition,” today’s statement reads. “Cisco remains committed to using all its resources to help our employees, the institutions and people of Ukraine, and our customers and partners during this challenging time.”
Earlier this year, the company changed how some of its employees would be paid, due to increasing inflation in the United States, and said it would experiment with a four-day work week. Still, despite the changes to compensation due to concerns about rising prices and the economic environment that appeared in an employee survey, Robbins downplayed concerns the country or globe would slip into economic recession last month, even as Cisco’s stock has taken a tumble in part due to ongoing supply chain challenges and what Robbins called “continuing uncertainty” during an investor call.
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