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Moscow is hinting that the company would be welcome back as part of a thaw under President Trump. Industry skepticism runs deep.
April 12, 2025, 12:01 a.m. ET
To hear President Vladimir V. Putin tell it, Russia’s economy has thrived despite Western sanctions, becoming more self-sufficient and reorienting toward new markets.
But there is one company that Russian officials make no secret about missing: Boeing.
The aviation giant’s planes play a critical role in Russia’s economy, connecting its far-flung cities. Until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Boeing sold and maintained planes in Russia and operated a major design center there. It also bought much of its titanium, a key material for modern jets, from Russia.
As President Trump pursues a striking rapprochement with Moscow, the company has emerged as an early test of whether American businesses that fled Russia early in the war will return.
Boeing has said nothing in public about whether it is considering going back, and it declined to comment for this article. But the obstacles are considerable.
Mr. Trump has so far kept in place American sanctions on Russian aviation, which give him leverage with Mr. Putin as he pursues negotiations to end the war. And there is widespread skepticism in U.S. aviation circles about the business sense of Boeing returning to Russia, a reflection of the enormous damage that three years of war have done to the country’s standing in the American corporate world.
“If given the choice between re-entering Russia and drinking bleach,” said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace consultant, “I’m sure that that glass of bleach is looking mighty good.”
