The beginning of 2025 saw international landscape reshape, in no small part as a consequence of the new U.S. administration’s first moves.

An important track in that process are the ongoing Russia-U.S. negotiations but also on various aspects of the bilateral relationship, with some goodwill and appetite for mending economic ties being shown on both sides.

Domestically in Russia, this has sparked a discussion on a potential comeback of foreign investors that left the country after February 2022 – as to whether and how it may happen. As a part of that discussion, the basic approaches how Russia will treat potential return of foreign investors have been outlined by President during his remarks at the annual Congress of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) on March 18, and the government was assigned to work on specific procedure of approving the return of investors.

Given the current dynamics where the positions of the U.S. and other countries of what Russia calls the “collective West” diverge, the discussion is more about U.S. companies than any others.
This discussion is only the beginning, and the involved government stakeholders, whose interests often diverge, have yet to work out a single approach. That being said, the situation is very dynamic, and a window of opportunity may open in the foreseeable future.

To understand whether that opening is enough to fit a particular case, a foreign investor considering a comeback will need to assess multiple external factors – starting from looking back to the track-record of its exit from Russia and how it is seen by Russian policy-makers, to assessing stakeholders who will decide on its case, industry specifics and how the Russian regulatory environment has changed since the investor decided to leave Russia.

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