The Influence of Import Substitution on International Companies' Business Activities: the Case of Italian Companies in Russia

The new political and economic scenario after the Crimean crisis of 2014 has drastically changed the economic environment for international companies that want to invest in Russia. In particular, the new import substitution policy pursued by the Russian government has negatively affected some sectors of Italian exports. The purpose of this research is to understand if Italian companies, taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the import substitution policy, can still carry out their commercial relations with Russia. To address this problem a methodological approach is used based on which a theoretical part, presented in the first chapter, is compared with the analytical part, introduced in the second chapter. The conclusions drawn from this research show that, in reality, the import substitution policy offers many opportunities for those Italian companies that are ready to locate production in Russia and collaborate with local authorities.