The chief executive of Russian aluminum company Rusal, Dutchman Bernard Zonneveld, has called for an “objective and independent” investigation into the atrocities in the Ukrainian town of Butja. The appeal is contained in a Rusal press release, signed by Zonneveld, which was issued on Wednesday published on the website of Rusal† The explanation is remarkable: critical voices about the war in Ukraine are a rarity in Russian business. However, the press release does not name Russia or the Russian government. “Reports from the Ukrainian city of Butja have shocked us,” said the press release. “We believe this crime should be thoroughly investigated.” On behalf of Rusal, Zonneveld calls for “a speedy peaceful solution to this conflict, to save priceless human lives and to be able to quickly return to normalcy.”
Zonneveld does not want to give an explanation of the press release to NRC† The Dutchman, a former banker at ING, among others, has chaired the supervisory board of Rusal, a company founded by oligarch Oleg Deripaska, since 2019. Deripaska, major shareholder in Rusal through parent company En+, was sanctioned by the United States and the United Kingdom after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for its ties to the Kremlin. The EU is also preparing sanctions against Deripaska. In addition to being chairman of the supervisory board at Rusal, Zonneveld is also an advisor at Capitalmind, a corporate finance consultancy based in Den Bosch.
The burden of the war
After the withdrawal of Russian soldiers from Butja, a suburb of Kiev, Ukrainian soldiers and journalists from international news agencies found dozens of dead bodies on the street. From an analysis of satellite images of The New York Times it turns out that those bodies were already there when the Russian army was in control of Butya.
The press statement calls for “severe punishment of the perpetrators” of the murders in Butsha. “As difficult as this may seem in the context of an ongoing information war.”
Zonneveld and Rusal go further than most Russian companies in seeking publicity about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but they avoid explicit criticism of the Russian government, which is not mentioned at all. Words like “war” and “invasion” are also excluded. The press release speaks of a “conflict of fratricide.”
Rusal is active in twenty countries, including Ukraine. The company is suffering from the war. A Rusal factory in the Ukrainian port city of Mikolayiv has been shut down since early March. Australia also banned the export of aluminum raw materials to Russia on March 20. According to credit rating agency S&P, Rusal can hardly get the raw materials from anywhere else.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 9 April 2022
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of April 9, 2022