Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many Americans have been distancing themselves from Russian businesses, including Massachusetts’ state government. Mike Deehan, GBH News State House Reporter, joined hosts Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel on Morning Edition to discuss efforts to pull Massachusetts money out of Russia. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Jeremy Siegel: So, Mike, last Thursday, Gov. Charlie Baker ordered all the executive agencies to review their contracts with outside vendors and to terminate any links to Russian state-owned companies. What does that actually mean for the commonwealth?
Mike Deehan: Baker started off this letter that accompanied the order calling the invasion, first of all, brutal and unjustified. So he’s not mincing words, and this is what we’re seeing from a lot of governors — pretty much every step of U.S. government, even down to the states, are condemning Putin’s actions in Ukraine.
What the order does is instruct A&F Secretary Heffernan, who is Baker’s chief budget guy, to review all the contracts the state does business with and to determine if there are any Russian connections. And then further, to see if those are connected to the Russian state, specifically its contracting with any Russian state-owned company or otherwise engaged in any part in affiliation with Russian state-owned companies. So this is really trying to target anything that could help the Kremlin, help the country, rather than private individuals.
In the same order, Baker wants independent agencies like universities and agencies that he doesn’t have direct control under to go through the same kind of process to determine whether or not they’re spending money and if Russia is profiting from it.
Paris Alston: So does that mean no Russian businesses at all are going to have financial ties to Massachusetts from now on?
Deehan: No — it’s specifically just those state-owned business interests that Baker is targeting, which makes this so complicated. You can’t just blanket say “no more Russia.” Because of course, Massachusetts and the United States has a big Russian American population. It does a lot of business with private entities in Russia. Not all of them are oligarchs. Not all of them are tied to Putin. So it is kind of tricky to isolate and identify those different contracts they might have.
So Baker said last week he doesn’t want to shut down companies from Russian immigrants who run businesses here or send money home, that kind of thing. He’s been careful about who does get cut off. It doesn’t do any good to harm Russian Americans or maybe a Russian restaurant or import business here that isn’t in any way …….
