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.
Scanning barcodes to squeeze Russia
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.
Oil first, corporate taxes next
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.
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We don’t have to wait four years for an election.
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.
Peeter: So symbolic protest and real economic pressure are fusing—becoming one act, not two.
Hosse: Our job is precisely to dissolve that line—from the symbolic to the effective.
We work with customer lifetime value.
Peeter: How do you assess the success and the prospects?
Hosse: We have more than 30,000 users, and there have already been 1.7 million scans. We’re working to make that impact more visible. We look at how much gets redirected through each scan—meaning, how much business shifts from the unethical company to the ethical one.
We work with customer lifetime value. If someone decides to avoid companies like Mondelez or Pepsi permanently, those companies take a hit across that consumer’s annual spending, over many years. Looking ahead, we’re going to have a significant influence.
What business needs is data
Peeter: Are you also trying to contact these companies directly?
Hosse: Yes. The B4Ukraine initiative is already in contact with companies, and we provide the data foundation for that work.
Business people need numbers, data, and facts to make decisions.
Peeter: This weekend, the B4Ukraine conference “Defunding, Disarming and Isolating Russia’s War Machine” is taking place. What are your personal expectations?
Hosse: We want to deliver data. Business people need numbers, data, and facts to make decisions—otherwise, you run into serious problems if you can’t substantiate your claims. Once you show the consumer that this is the lever to send a message to a company, it works. I want to understand what other kinds of data we can collect that would best support this activism.
We’re working on app features to minimize the time and cost for consumers.
Peeter: We live in an age of very short attention spans. Who has time to dive into corporate data?
Hosse: The problem is technical, and the solution will be technical as well. We’re working on app features to minimize the time and cost for consumers. The app is free, so minimizing the time investment is our main task.
Ukraine is already a Western state
Peeter: A final thought—where does Ukraine fit in all this?
Hosse: I deliberately count Ukraine as a Western state because, culturally, it is one. We can fight for Western liberal ideals, and for that, we need technical solutions.
We’re working on solutions to connect freedom-loving people around the world.
Authoritarian systems look frightening because they can concentrate resources. But we’re better at creating resources in the first place. We’re working on solutions to connect freedom-loving people around the world.
Peeter: So, we need transparent, free-to-use, and democratically built technical tools?
Felix Hosse: Exactly.
