Microsoft quits Russia, but leaves big debt behind
Photo: Microsoft leaves Russia (Getty Images)
The American tech giant Microsoft is shutting down its last legal presence in Russia. Its local subsidiary is filing for bankruptcy, leaving behind $949,000 in debt,
The Moscow Times reports.
The US corporation has decided to exit the Russian market. According to the outlet, the subsidiary LLC Microsoft Rus is preparing to file for bankruptcy with the Moscow Arbitration Court.
A corresponding notice was published on the Russian federal registry portal Fedresource. Reportedly, Gazprombank acted as the company’s creditor, and its claim was one of the reasons for the court filing.
Lawsuit against Microsoft
In January 2025, Gazprombank filed a lawsuit demanding 90.9 million rubles (about $949,000) from Microsoft's Russian legal entity, as part of a case over unjust enrichment.
According to court documents, the dispute involves a technical support contract signed in September 2021 and valid through September 12, 2022.
The plaintiff claims that starting in April 2022, Microsoft Rus stopped fulfilling its contractual obligations, despite having received full payment in advance.
In April, the court partially upheld the claim and ordered the company to pay a total of $949,000:
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$887,000 as unjust enrichment
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$62,000 in interest
Additionally, the court ordered interest to continue accruing based on Russia’s weighted average interest rate until the actual payment date.
Microsoft's exit from Russia
Microsoft formally began winding down its operations in Russia back in spring 2022, shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. However, the company maintained a legal presence in the country until recently.
Between December 2024 and January 2025, Microsoft officially shut down its branches in 13 Russian cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Vladivostok, and Krasnodar.
This was confirmed in a corporate report published on March 7, 2025. It emphasized that at that time, the issue of liquidating the legal entity was not on the agenda.
Notably, last year, Russian hackers from the Midnight Blizzard group hacked into the accounts of employees of Microsoft's cybersecurity service, legal, and other departments.
In addition, we reported that in the fall of 2024, Russia fined Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 for allegedly blocking pro-Russian channels on YouTube.
