EX-PEPSI CEO CALLED PUTIN A ‘GREAT LEADER’ AFTER RUSSIA ANNEXED CRIMEA:
Indra Nooyi — who ran the Purchase, NY-based soda-and-snacks giant from 2006 to 2018 — raised eyebrows more than once as she aggressively sought to build ties with Putin’s Russia. Her bold investments began to unravel on Tuesday as the company, along with archrival Coca-Cola, said it was suspending soda sales and advertising in Russia. Pepsi shares dipped 2.7%.
In October 2011, shortly after PepsiCo paid $5.4 billion for Russian dairy-and-juice conglomerate OAO Wimm-Bill-Dann, Nooyi gave a gushing review of Putin’s leadership.
“I have been in meetings with many, many world leaders,” Nooyi told the Moscow Times. “But when it came to Foreign Investment Advisory Council attendees, the issues and the comments they made, Prime Minister Putin was on top of every issue.”
In May 2014, just weeks after Russia had taken the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in a military invasion, Nooyi told PepsiCo analysts the company had “great relationships” with Russian officials, according to the Wall Street Journal.
But a few months later on Sept. 14 of the same year, sources said Nooyi took it a step further as she praised Putin at a meeting of 16 top US, Western European, Russian and Ukrainian business leaders that had been called in Geneva, Switzerland to address the crisis in Crimea by Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chair of the World Economic Forum.
“She said to me and a colleague from Ukraine that Putin was a ‘great leader,’” a source told The Post, noting that Nooyi had offered her candid praise of the former KGB agent during a coffee break.
Flashback to 2005: Pepsi Exec Likens America to Middle Finger.