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Little-known Russian company KS Logistika has asked President Vladimir Putin to place the Russian legal entities of the food producer Nestlé under temporary management, Kommersant reported, citing a source familiar with the matter.

Another source at the paper says the request has been forwarded for review to the office of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Patrushev, with a response due by the end of this year.

Temporary management is under discussion for five Russian entities of the multinational: Nestlé Russia, Nestlé Kuban, Cereal Partners Rus, TsPB Nestlé and Atrium Innovations Rus. According to the paper's source, the move is prompted by the absence of any plans to expand capacity and by the halt to exports of goods made in Russia.

Nestlé's Russian office said it had received no requests from state bodies in connection with the KS Logistika approach. It stressed that its offices and plants continue to operate in Russia and that all its obligations are being met. The company added that Nestlé's investment in Russia in 2022-2025 had gone towards supporting production and operations.

Nestlé has operated fully in Russia since 1994. It makes products under brands including Nescafé, Nestea, Purina, Maggi, KitKat and NAN. In 2022, after the start of the war in Ukraine, Nestlé suspended investment in the country and stopped selling some of its brands and advertising, focusing on essential goods.

Nestlé currently has six production sites — in the Kaluga, Vologda, Samara, Vladimir, Perm and Krasnodar regions, a Kommersant source in the food industry says — making coffee, confectionery, baby food and pet food.

Mikhail Burmistrov, head of the research firm Infoline-Analitika, estimates that Nestlé's Russian business, with its current portfolio of brands, could be worth 120–125 billion rubles (USD 1.4–1.5 billion). On top of that, he says, the company may have accumulated 40-50 billion rubles in undistributed profit. 

In putting its proposal forward, KS Logistika most likely represents the interests of outside parties, market participants surveyed by Kommersant believe. KS Logistika posted modest revenue of 1.6 million rubles (c. USD 19,000) in 2025. According to the SPARK corporate database, the company's beneficiary, Gerasim Bogomolov, also owns Obatem Pro, a firm that supplies German-made Metabo power tools and was controlled by German entities until 2025.

According to experts surveyed by the paper, a suspension of an investment programme is, on the one hand, unlikely to count as grounds for imposing temporary management; on the other, in certain cases it may be construed as a threat to the stability of production.

Formally, temporary management does not entail seizure of the asset. Even so, the business often ends up passing to a Russian investor after the procedure — through nationalisation, as with Rolf auto dealership, or through a sale. There is, however, a precedent to the contrary: the case of Ariston, whose Italian owner regained control over the assets after the completion of temporary management.