Sartorius Position on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine and Delivery to Russia

Update: October 23, 2024

Russia’s war against Ukraine and the associated regulatory frameworks have led to highly difficult business conditions over the last two and a half years. Despite Sartorius’ prior approach to only deliver products that are critical to produce urgently needed medicines to Russia, the situation has become increasingly untenable, so that we cannot maintain business activities in Russia any longer.

Consequently, Sartorius will discontinue business activities in both divisions, completing only pending orders. We expect to finalize this process by the end of the year.

Update: December 7, 2022

Sartorius condemns Russia’s aggression against sovereign Ukraine. We stand by the Ukrainian people who suffer from the deaths of their family members and the immense devastation of their country.

Since February 2022 and as a direct response, Sartorius stopped all activities in Russia that are not related to humanitarian medical products. This means we have discontinued delivering products to outside the pharma and medical sector, and stopped hiring new staff, capital investments and promotional activities. This resulted in a very substantial decline of our Russian business in 2022.

The decision to continue delivering products into the pharma and medical sector is based on our ethical obligation to support the treatment of patients regardless of the country they live in. We follow the position of the German Government who deliberately omitted supply of essential healthcare product from its sanction regime. Hereby we also act in the spirit of the UN and the European Union calling for access to healthcare for all people.

Further, after the beginning of the war, Sartorius immediately started to support the humanitarian non-profit organization “action medeor” in their efforts to deliver medication and medical equipment to Ukraine and has donated 1 million euros for this purpose so far. In addition, many of our employees donated through several initiatives, e.g., “Germany is helping” and Red Cross relief campaigns and engaged themselves in various activities to support refugees from Ukraine.