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Levi Strauss doesn’t expect to reopen in Russia this year, the chief executive said on Wednesday, a month after the California jeans maker “temporarily” halted operations there in response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“As things are going now, I’m not optimistic that we’ll be back in full force anytime soon,” Chip Bergh told the Financial Times, adding that his forecasts now point to no further revenue in 2022 from a market that performed well last year. for about 2 percent of sales.

Levi’s still pays more than 800 workers in Russia and has kept a few outlets open “to flush inventory,” he said, but “every day you open the paper, the situation looks worse.”

Conditions for Western companies in Russia were “very difficult,” Bergh said, noting that authorities had been given powers that would allow them to nationalize the activities of companies that stop supplying Russian customers.

“They could be taking our trademark literally,” he warned, echoing a concern expressed privately by other executives.

A survey by the Boston Consulting Group, published this week, found that two-thirds of investors expected it would take at least two years for Western companies to want to operate in Russia again, with 39 percent saying it would take five years or more. to last.

However, few CEOs have made public forecasts about how long they might be frozen from the Russian market.

Despite demand hovering over Russia, Levi’s confirmed its full-year outlook after delivering first-quarter earnings and earnings per share that beat consensus expectations.

Read more about Levi’s view of Russia here