These members of the diaspora working for large companies, often hired for their mastery of the Russian language, take the risk of losing their customers or their use.
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Olga de Truchis did not keep more than one day. Unthinkable for this 39-year-old Ukrainian, framework in a large French bank in the Paris region, to continue its activities with the Russian partners and customers of its employer. In the aftermath of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, Friday, February 25, it sends an e-mail to its two officials telling them that it is no longer able to “accompany the activities of the company in Russia”.
However, it was its mission: Olga de Truchis had integrated in April 2021 a cell devoted to the development of the banking institution and its subsidiaries in these territories of the East. “I can not do business with Russia anymore, she launches. My chefs support me, but I do not know if they will reassign me or let me go, what does it matter, I’m ready to lose my job . “In the stride, she publishes a message on Facebook inviting her” Western friends “to follow her. A few days later, in a letter dated March 3, the employees of the company, supported by the CGT, ask their employer to “suspend his activities with Russia”.
like Olga of Truchis, many Ukrainian executives working in France, professionally related to Russia, say “ready to choose”, even if you lose their jobs Or their customers, to “financially suffer”, but also to erase the “big plus” of their CVs. Originally from a small village located 30 kilometers from Kiev, a daughter of a journalist and a history teacher at the University, Olga de Truchis is Russian-speaking, like all his compatriots. Beyond its technical skills, the command of the language allowed him to win his first job on his arrival in France, in 2009. And the others later.
“A tearing for us”
Choosing, it’s also “give up without denying it” – “It’s so deeply rooted in us” – to a part of their “double culture”, testifies Denys T., 42, a Ukrainian lawyer installed in France for twenty years. “In reality, it’s a tear for us, many of us are between two, my wife is Russian, my children go to Russian school, I master the Russian better than the Ukrainian, then the only way Not too much to suffer from this situation, it is to tell me that I feel hate towards the Putin regime, but not towards Russia or to the Russians, “he explains.
Rest that if only one of its customers of Russian nationality, rich investors in real estate, suggests some form of support for Vladimir Putin or the Russian offensive in Ukraine, “it will be finished, finished, I Will not work with them anymore, I’m not caught in the throat, I can choose “. So far, he says, these regularly ask for news from his family in Ukraine.
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