Daniel Wolfram
The Japanese Foreign Ministry summoned and directly confronted the Russian Ambassador over the forced takeover.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin signed a decree placing three more subsidiaries of Japan Tobacco International under state-appointed management, according to The Moscow Times.
The latest order targets JTI Russia, Pereslavl-Tabak, and an innovative products division, transferring day-to-day oversight directly to a domestic operator.
Putin is now one of the largest tobacco-company owners.
Just forty-eight hours earlier, another decree had struck. In that initial round, Moscow took control of four major manufacturing hubs, including Petro and JTI Donskoy Tabak, which together employ roughly 4,000 workers. According to local industry estimates, the seized operations are worth up to 300 billion rubles, or about $3.7 billion.
It is a massive blow for the Tokyo-headquartered giant. Back in 1999, the corporation entered the Russian market, eventually commanding roughly 40 percent of local cigarette sales through household names like Winston, Camel, Sobranie, and LD.
When the war in Ukraine broke out in 2022, the company paused new investments in Russia, but in 2023 it chose to keep its factories running.
Spies and protests
The lucrative tobacco empire is now run by a firm called Industrial Assets. Corporate filings show the company was incorporated in September 2026, giving it very little commercial track record.
Behind the scenes, its leadership tells a revealing story. Russian corporate registries list Sergei Dremov as one of the founders. He is a former member of the regional assembly in Russian-occupied Crimea, and his background includes sixteen years working inside state security agencies.
Overseas, the aggressive takeover quickly triggered anger. Tokyo lodged an official protest over the seizures, demanding that Moscow scrap the decree and return managerial authority to the foreign owners immediately.
Japan’s Foreign Ministry even confronted Russian Ambassador Nikolay Nozdrev directly. With international companies facing constant expropriation risks across the country, corporate boardrooms are running out of diplomatic escape routes.
