Diane Francis
February 23, 2026
The Brooklyn Bridge was infamously “sold” several times to hapless investors in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by George Parker, one of history’s most audacious swindlers. When his buyers attempted to erect toll gates on the bridge, authorities refused because they lacked legal title. Parker died in prison, but fraudsters prosper because there’s “a sucker born every minute”. Currently, the biggest conman is Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who dangles $14-trillion worth of business opportunities to New Yorker Donald Trump and his cronies in an attempt to distract efforts away from stopping the shooting in Ukraine. Over the past year, parallel “peace” talks have occurred, one about stopping the war and another about making tons of money in Russia for Americans. Trump’s negotiators are businessmen, not military strategists, and have not imposed sanctions or military pressure on Russia. They think they’re the smartest guys in the room, but to Russians, they’re no different than the saps who thought they bought the Brooklyn Bridge.
The Kremlin is a criminal organization that not only steals from its people but has skinned alive generations of foreign investors. Putin’s team offers “opportunities” to buy oil fields, pipelines, mines, or other assets, but in a mafia state like Russia, deals are not worth the paper they’re written on. There is no rule of law across its 11 time zones; judges and police are for sale, and regulatory corruption is rampant, along with bribery and extortion. The economic history of Russia is marked by numerous financial casualties from around the world. Despite documented wreckage, Reuters reported in August that the U.S. began encouraging American businesses and investors to discuss big business deals with Moscow “as incentives to encourage the Kremlin to agree to peace in Ukraine, and for Washington to ease sanctions on Russia”.
Three massive transactions are being discussed: ExxonMobil’s repossession of its Russian Sakhalin-1 oil and gas project; the refurbishment and expansion of LNG projects in the north by Americans, which are currently under Western sanctions; and the potential purchase by the US of a fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers from Russia. Hundreds of billions of dollars from the United States would flow into the industrial base of a predator nation that’s destroying Ukraine and exporting terrorism globally. Trump’s strategy is to make deals, not bring the carnage to an end, and Putin plays for time.
The facts prove that Russia is the “Brooklyn Bridge” of investment or business destinations. What follows is the list of recent casualties, and American corporations have sustained the largest financial losses in Russia following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, among foreign companies. As of early 2025, direct losses for U.S. businesses—stemming from asset seizures, forced sales, and write-offs—could total up to $324 billion, based on the valuation of lost future earnings and physical assets.
High-Profile Exits & Seizures:
– ExxonMobil: Recorded a $4 billion write-off after exiting its Sakhalin-1 oil project.
– McDonald’s: Left the market, selling to a local licensee and incurring exorbitant losses.
– J.P. Morgan: Russian courts seized over $440 million from their accounts in 2024. Citigroup left in 2025 after slowly winding down operations.
– Other major companies like PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Cargill, Pratt & Whitney, Procter & Gamble, and Starbucks experienced severe disruptions and massive losses, with many selling assets to Moscow or to oligarchs at discounts of 90–100%.
– The Russian government has, since its first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, moved from allowing orderly exits to forcibly seizing assets. As of 2026, 547 international companies have fled Russia, and most of the 2,260 international companies that remain do so only to avoid expropriation and exit taxes.
The Kremlin will steal whatever it can in the future from companies encouraged to do deals there. Putin and his henchmen systematically shake down or target foreigners. They appoint “temporary managements” and take control of the assets. Companies that downsize or leave are levied “exit taxes”. In 2024, some $2.7 billion in “exit taxes” were collected. There is no appeal, and judges simply freeze or seize cash and property without justification.
Even worse, those who resist or legally fight end up being jailed or even murdered, as happened to Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in custody in Moscow in 2009 after objecting to a Moscow tax scam designed to confiscate assets from his client, American investor William Browder. He had become the biggest owner of shares in Russia’s newly public companies, and he has campaigned ever since against the regime. “If I could do it all again, I would never have invested in Russia,” he said. He promoted the Magnitsky Act in 2012, which is a US law authorizing sanctions, such as travel bans and asset freezes, against foreign individuals responsible for human rights abuses or corruption. It was targeted against the Russians who killed Magnitsky, but the 2016 Global Magnitsky Act expanded this authority worldwide.
So why would Trump lead American investors and businesses into Russia? The answer is simple: There’s one born every minute. He believes that Moscow will honor deals reached with major American companies and Trump dealmakers, even though history shows that’s not the case. And once these Americans take Putin’s “sucker bait,” and their checks have cleared in Putin’s Swiss bank accounts, Russia will devour them, and American investors, shareholders, companies, and taxpayers will end up footing a staggering bill.
Diane Francis is an expert on Canada, the United States, Canada-US relations, Silicon Valley, future technology, geopolitics, the Ukraine-Russia conflict, Putin, energy, business, and white-collar crime. Always provocative, her direct and forceful writing has established her international reputation in covering the personalities, trends, and financial backstories that affect companies, individuals, governments and societies. Her popular twitter feed on tech and corruption has more than 240,000 followers around the world. An award-winning columnist, bestselling author, investigative journalist, speaker, and television commentator, she is Editor-at-Large at Canada’s National Post and a columnist for American Interest, Atlantic Council’s Ukraine Alert, and Kyiv Post. In 1991, Francis became Editor of Canada’s Financial Post, the first woman editor of a national daily newspaper in Canada, a position she held until the paper was sold in 1998. She is the author of ten books, including Merger of the Century: Why Canada and America Should Become One Country (2013, featured in a cover story in Foreign Policy), Who Owns Canada Now?: Old Money, New Money and the Future of Canadian Business (2008), and Immigration: The Economic Case (2002).