McDonald’s is leaving Russia altogether

They’re selling off all their assets in Russia, and will “de-Arch” all their sites, meaning that under international law the McDonalds logos and whatnot will not be allowed to be used for any business in Russia. Given Russia’s dubious relationship with intellectual property and copyright laws, I kinda expect McDonalds to *seem* to still be in business, many of the existing locations being bought out and re-opened by some Kremlin-crony using the existing hardware and much of the staff. I *assume* that the bulk of their food ingredients were sourced from Russian providers; I would imagine that producing virtually identical menu items to what they made as McDonalds should be fairly straightforward.

It should prove interesting to see how McDonalds iconography gets mutated into Russian propaganda.