McDonald's targeted by Russian regulators

As Russia and the West exchange tit-for-tat sanctions on various good and industries, McDonald's has found its Russian operations caught squarely in the crossfire.

Reuters says that what began as a probe into Moscow-area McDonald's by public health authorities has spread to other regions throughout Russia.

The health inspection agency is known as Rospotrebnadzor, which denied any connection between the investigation that left four McDonald's in Moscow closed, and the tensions between Russia and the international community.

Rospotrebnadzor said that it has no plans to close McDonald's locations in Russia's Tatarstan region when it announced plans for inspections there Aug. 21.

Newsweek reports that in addition to Tatarstan, the agency will be inspecting McDonald's in the regions of Sverdlovsk and Veronezh.

Although Rospotrebnadzor denies the inspections are politically motivated, there is a historical precedent of Russia using health inspections and public safety as a guise for political and economic retribution against international actors.

In 2010, Russia briefly halted imports of chicken from the United States for public health reasons, although they were treated in line with international regulations for the export and handling of poultry.

Making it more difficult to believe that the checks against McDonald's are not politically motivated is the fact that the Tatarstan city of Kazan has one of the highest concentrations of McDonald's outside the cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg. There are 17 McDonald's in Kazan alone, according to Reuters.

There are 440 McDonald's in Russia that serve around 1 million people daily, according to Reuters. In Tatarstan, McDonald's employs around 1,500 people.

McDonald's was one of the first companies to capitalize on the fall of Communism in the 1990s. The first McDonald's opened in Russia was among those closed in the Moscow crackdown, according to Newsweek.