About 2,300 large Western companies still pay taxes in Russia. State sanctions won’t touch most of them—going after every individual corporate holdout isn’t politically feasible, and, as Felix Hosse puts it bluntly, it’s „not politically wanted.” So an international startup team—with its CEO working from Kyiv—built an app to do what governments won’t.
Push To Leave lets consumers scan a product’s barcode in any supermarket and see, instantly, whether the parent company is still a taxpayer in Russia. More than 30,000 users have run 1.7 million scans so far.
Hosse sat down with Euromaidan Press ahead of B4Ukraine’s 26 April 2026 Kyiv conference „Defunding, Disarming and Isolating Russia’s War Machine.”
We asked him whether outsourcing sanctions to a smartphone app isn’t, frankly, a sign of Western weakness. His answer cuts the other way—and runs straight through how democracies actually fight authoritarian states.
Peeter Helme: Start with the basics. What does Push To Leave do?
Felix Hosse: It’s a smartphone app that lets consumers withdraw money from Russia by avoiding companies still active there—still paying taxes there—and going to their competitors instead.
We inform the customer so they can choose the alternative.
The way it works: in a supermarket, you scan the barcode on the back of the product, and our app immediately tells you whether that product comes from a company that’s still operating in Russia. If the answer is yes, we inform the customer so they can choose the alternative. We also calculate the company’s real-time losses and make that data available to the company.
Peeter: Taking a step back—from your perspective, what is currently the most important sanctions lever in the fight against Russia’s war financing, and why?
Hosse: I think you always have to look at the physical sanctions first—the attacks on Russia’s oil infrastructure. Those are currently the biggest lever Ukraine and the free world have.
But other levers also come into play once that one is working because Russia has to finance itself somehow. As long as the oil and gas lever is effective, other levers—like corporate taxation—become significantly more interesting because by then, Russia has even bigger problems.
Many companies announced they would leave—and then didn’t, or only partially did.
Peeter: Could you say these are two sides of the same coin? The so-called „kinetic sanctions,” as Zelenskyy likes to call them, are on a high level, and what you’re doing on a grassroots level?
Hosse: Exactly. And of course, one has to say that certain sanctions by states do work. But there’s little political support for sanctioning every single company that’s still operating in Russia. That’s not politically feasible or wanted.
That’s why it’s important to give consumers the ability to avoid these companies and build the pressure needed to push them out of Russia. Many companies announced they would leave—and then didn’t, or only partially did.
2,300 large companies still pay Russian taxes
Peeter: What’s the situation right now? How big is this problem?
Hosse: We have very good research from the Kyiv School of Economics. In their January dataset, of around 4,000 tracked large companies, approximately 2,300 are still active in Russia. About 550 have fully exited. The remaining 1,350 are somewhere in the process.
That’s exactly why solutions like ours exist—to solve this information problem.
Peeter: But at the same time, some companies have gone back to Russia.
Hosse: Yes, some are indeed returning because they don’t feel the consumer pressure or regulatory pressure in their home countries. That’s exactly why solutions like ours exist—to solve this information problem. Companies find it hard to assess how expensive it actually is for them to lose money in their main markets, compared with what they’re earning in Russia.
When you scan a product in the supermarket, our app recognizes the barcode and identifies the parent company.
Peeter: How does Push To Leave make all this visible and actionable for consumers?
Hosse: Our database is largely built on the Kyiv School of Economics dataset. When you scan a product in the supermarket, our app recognizes the barcode and identifies the parent company. Even if it’s a regional brand, we can tell you whether the parent company is still a taxpayer there. That way, the information is available directly at the point of sale, so consumers can make purchasing decisions.
Is a consumer app a sign of Western weakness?
Peeter: But isn’t it actually a sign of Western weakness that you have to build an app, rather than states regulating this through legislation?
Hosse: I think we have a huge advantage as democracies—that we shape our political will this way. The fact that we can’t organize democratic majorities for certain things, or that the system yields to special interests, is exactly what makes us necessary. I don’t necessarily see it as a sign of weakness.
We can have an enormous influence and leverage it effectively through a technical solution.
In totalitarian states, you wouldn’t need our app—the state would simply boycott everything. I believe that, as a free West with free individuals, we can have an enormous influence and leverage it effectively through a technical solution like this.
„We don’t need voters—we need consumers”
Peeter: The app has about 30,000 active users, yet interest in the war is declining in the press. How do you see the situation?
Felix Hosse: In any longer war, general interest declines. That’s unfortunately human and normal. But we always have a significant number of people showing support.
We don’t need the largest possible number of users. We need them concentrated in countries with purchasing power to change the economic calculus of companies. We don’t need voters—we need consumers, who vote every day through their purchasing decisions.
That’s the trick. That’s why we’re more stable in our support than electoral politics—we don’t have to wait four years for an election…
[Context: Felix Hosse jest założycielem teamu startupowego, który stworzył aplikację Push To Leave. Aplikacja ta ma na celu umożliwienie konsumentom unikania firm, które wciąż działają w Rosji i płacą tam podatki.]
[Fact Check: Aplikacja Push To Leave pozwala skanować kody kreskowe produktów w supermarketach i sprawdzać, czy firma-matka nadal płaci podatki w Rosji.]
