After several of McDonald's Russia restaurants were shut down in August and early September, the famous American franchise places a lawsuit against the country's watchdog of the consumer industry.
Since last August, McDonald's Russia restaurants across the Eurasian country have been mass audited, and about 10 of them have been shut down due to public concerns of "violations of technical regulations requirements by the manufacturer, executor and seller".
McDonald's Russia has recently been under attack by the Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Well-Being, also called Rospotrebnadzor, over the proceedings taken against the chain in the midst of political conflicts between Russia and the West, particularly the United States of America.
After the first restaurant of the famous fast food chain was opened in 1990 in Pushkin Square (with waiting lines that extended for blocks), McDonald's Russia has been one of the icons of the West in the former Soviet republic. Currently, the Eastern power has become estranged from the United States due to its stance in the Ukraine conflict, which has even included the annexation of the Crimea region to the Russian Federation. Moscow's politics have caused the West to restrict economic exchanges with Western nations as a reprimand; and, according to analysts, the actions taken against McDonald's Russia are part of the country's strategy to "get back" at the United States.
Yesterday, September 24, Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported that McDonald's Russia has filed a lawsuit in the arbitration court in the Russian city of Voronezh, asking for it to rule the Rospotrebnadzor decision to shut down several restaurants across the country as illegal.
The McDonald's chain counts Russia as one of its most important markets, with 444 restaurants in 75 regions of the Vladimir Putin-governed country. The Pushkin Square restaurant, the first to open in the country in the last years of the Soviet rule, is the McDonald's with the most visits; in all, the chain counts around 1 million patrons per day in the entire country.
