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Once a Powerful Symbol in Russia, McDonald’s Withdraws

Hundreds of Muscovites line up outside the first McDonald's restaurant in the Soviet Union on its opening day, in Moscow, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 1990. (AP)
Hundreds of Muscovites line up outside the first McDonald's restaurant in the Soviet Union on its opening day, in Moscow, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 1990. (AP)
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Once a Powerful Symbol in Russia, McDonald’s Withdraws

Hundreds of Muscovites line up outside the first McDonald's restaurant in the Soviet Union on its opening day, in Moscow, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 1990. (AP)
Hundreds of Muscovites line up outside the first McDonald's restaurant in the Soviet Union on its opening day, in Moscow, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 1990. (AP)

Two months after the Berlin Wall fell, another powerful symbol opened its doors in the middle of Moscow: a gleaming new McDonald’s.

It was the first American fast-food restaurant to enter the Soviet Union, reflecting the new political openness of the era. For Vlad Vexler, who as a 9-year-old waited in a two-hour line to enter the restaurant near Moscow’s Pushkin Square on its opening day in January 1990, it was a gateway to the utopia he imagined the West to be.

“We thought that life there was magical and there were no problems,” Vexler said.

So it was all the more poignant for Vexler when McDonald’s announced it would temporarily close that store and nearly 850 others in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“That McDonald’s is a sign of optimism that in the end didn’t materialize,” said Vexler, a political philosopher and author who now lives in London. “Now that Russia is entering the period of contraction, isolation and impoverishment, you look back at these openings and think about what might have been.”

McDonald’s said in a statement that “at this juncture, it’s impossible to predict when we might be able to reopen our restaurants in Russia.” But it is continuing to pay its 62,500 Russian employees. The company said this week that it expects the closure to cost around $50 million per month.

Outside a McDonald’s in Moscow last week, student Lev Shalpo bemoaned the closure.

“It’s wrong because it was the only affordable place for me where I could eat,” he said.

Just as McDonald’s paved the way for other brands to enter the Soviet market, its exit led to a cascade of similar announcements from other US brands. Starbucks closed its 130 outlets in Russia. Yum Brands closed its 70 company-owned KFC restaurants and was negotiating the closure of 50 Pizza Huts that are owned by franchisees.

McDonald’s entry into the Soviet Union began with a chance meeting. In 1976, McDonald’s loaned some buses to organizers of the 1980 Moscow Olympics who were touring Olympic venues in Montreal, Canada. George Cohon, then the head of McDonald’s in Canada, took the visitors to McDonald’s as part of the tour. That same night, the group began discussing ways to open a McDonald’s in the Soviet Union.

Fourteen years later, after Soviet laws loosened and McDonald’s built relationships with local farmers, the first McDonald’s opened in downtown Moscow. It was a sensation.

On its opening day, the restaurant’s 27 cash registers rang up 30,000 meals. Vexler and his grandmother waited in a line with thousands of others to enter the 700-seat store, entertained by traditional Russian musicians and costumed characters like Mickey Mouse.

“The feeling was, ‘Let’s go and see how Westerners do things better. Let’s go and see what a healthy society has to offer,’” Vexler said.

Vexler saved money for weeks to buy his first McDonald’s meal: a cheeseburger, fries and a Coca-Cola. The food had a “plasticky goodness” he had never experienced before, he said.

Eileen Kane visited the original McDonald’s often in 1991 and 1992 when she was an exchange student at Moscow State University. She found it a striking contrast from the rest of the country, which was suffering frequent food shortages as the Soviet Union collapsed.

“McDonald’s was bright and colorful and they never ran out of anything. It was like a party atmosphere,” said Kane, who is now a history professor at Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut.

McDonald’s entry into the Soviet Union was so groundbreaking it gave rise to a political theory. The Golden Arches Theory holds that two countries that both have McDonald’s in them won’t go to war, because the presence of a McDonald’s is an indicator of the countries’ level of inter-dependence and their alignment with US laws, said Bernd Kaussler, a political science professor at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

That theory held until 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, Kaussler said.

Kaussler said the number of countries now withdrawing from Russia, and the speed with which they acted, is unprecedented. He thinks some - including McDonald’s - might calculate that it's unwise to reopen, which would leave Russia more isolated and the world less secure.

“As the Russian economy is becoming less inter-dependent with the US and Europe, we basically have fewer domestic economic factors that could mitigate current aggressive policies,” Kaussler said.

Vexler said the admiration for the West that caused Russians to embrace McDonald’s three decades ago has also shifted. Russians now tend to be more anti-Western, he said.

Anastasia Chubina visited a McDonald’s in Moscow last week because her child wanted one last meal there. But she was indifferent about its closure, suggesting Russians will get healthier if they stop eating fast food.

“I think we lived without it before and will live further,” she said.

Entrepreneur Yekaterina Kochergina said the closure could be a good opportunity for Russian fast-food brands to enter the market.

“It is sad, but it’s not a big deal. We’ll survive without McDonald’s,” she said.

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How a Surgeon Kept a Sudan Hospital Functioning on the War’s Front Line

Dr. Jamal Eltaeb checks a patient at Al Nao Hospital in Omdurman, on the outskirts of Khartoum, Saturday, April 18, 2026. (AP)
Dr. Jamal Eltaeb checks a patient at Al Nao Hospital in Omdurman, on the outskirts of Khartoum, Saturday, April 18, 2026. (AP)
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How a Surgeon Kept a Sudan Hospital Functioning on the War’s Front Line

Dr. Jamal Eltaeb checks a patient at Al Nao Hospital in Omdurman, on the outskirts of Khartoum, Saturday, April 18, 2026. (AP)
Dr. Jamal Eltaeb checks a patient at Al Nao Hospital in Omdurman, on the outskirts of Khartoum, Saturday, April 18, 2026. (AP)

For three years, Dr. Jamal Eltaeb made excruciating choices. Who should live and potentially die? Should he operate without the right medicines if it might save someone's life? How would he find fuel to keep the hospital's lights on?

As Sudan 's war raged around him, only one decision was easy: Keep working.

The orthopedic surgeon was leading Al Nao hospital in Omdurman, just outside the capital, Khartoum, as control of the urban area shifted between Sudan's army and paramilitary fighters. As the front line moved closer and the hospital overflowed with patients, some colleagues lost their nerve and left.

The soft-spoken Eltaeb was a rare surgeon who remained. Even as the hospital was bombed more than once. Even as most medical supplies ran out.

“I weighed the options of staying here, and taking care of your patients and helping other people that need you as a skilled surgeon, rather than choose your own safety,” he told The Associated Press in an interview.

He is one of countless Sudanese who have pitched in to help as the world largely looks elsewhere, distracted by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine. He has seen the bodies behind the estimates of tens of thousands of people killed, and what it means — day to excruciating day — when the United Nations warns his country's health system is near collapse.

Nearly 40% of Sudan's hospitals no longer function. Many have been stripped for parts or used by armed groups as bases. Sudan’s army has since retaken the capital, and Al Nao remains one of the area's only functioning health centers.

Oxygen canisters and hospital beds at a war-damaged section of Al Shaabi Hospital in Khartoum, Saturday, April 18, 2026. (AP)

Some operations were done on the hospital floor

Walking through the complex, the 54-year-old showed AP journalists the remnants of some of the hardest months of his life.

Over there was a window that was struck, killing the relative of a patient. And there in the courtyard was the last tent standing of the many erected during the peak of the conflict to accommodate mass casualties.

“We were working everywhere, in tents, outside, on the floor, doing everything to save patients’ lives,” he said.

The work earned Eltaeb the $1 million Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, which honors individuals who risk their lives to save others. He gave some of the money to medical and humanitarian groups around the world.

Before the war, staffers said, Al Nao was a quiet hospital with its nearly 100 beds empty much of the time. But when fighting began in Khartoum and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces captured swaths of the city, patients hurried in.

Eltaeb's own hospital elsewhere closed shortly after the war began in April 2023, and he moved to Al Nao. By July, most of the staff had fled, leaving him in charge.

He and a handful of employees and volunteers struggled to keep the place running. Electricity was out for weeks as the facility relied on the army to supply fuel for generators. Medicines like antibiotics and painkillers ran out.

‘From that moment, we knew that we are a target’

In August, a month after Eltaeb took charge, the hospital was hit for the first time.

“From that moment, we knew that we are a target ... And from that time, they didn’t stop targeting us,” he said. The RSF later struck the hospital three more times.

Normality had crumbled. A father of three, Eltaeb sat in his office and handed out sweets to a steady stream of patients and staff vying for his attention.

Decisions were nearly impossible. On a particularly harrowing day in late 2024, he and his team scrambled to triage over 100 wounded people after a strike hit a nearby market. Eight of them died.

“You choose ... as if you can choose who is going to live and who is going to die,” he said.

The day only got worse. Eltaeb had to decide whether to amputate on children without full anesthetic because they were bleeding heavily and he didn't have time to transport them to the operating room.

Using local anesthetic, he removed an arm and leg of a 9-year-old boy and a leg of his 11 year-old sister.

He now scrolls through photos of such surgeries on his phone, attempting to explain to the world a horror few can grasp.

A member of the military media accompanied the AP during the visit, including during interviews. The AP retains full editorial control of its content.

A guard walks through a war-damaged section of Al Shaabi Hospital in Khartoum, Saturday, April 18, 2026. (AP)

Volunteers delivered supplies by bicycle

The hospital relied on volunteers to keep supplies coming. They would post what they needed on social media, and pharmacists would provide the keys for their long-closed shops and allow volunteers to take medicines and other items for free.

One volunteer, Nazar Mohamed, spent months riding around Omdurman, often on a bicycle, delivering supplies while explosions echoed.

Other donations came from organizations and individuals abroad. A network of Sudanese doctors overseas provided remote advice on coping with mass casualties or what to do when antibiotics or anesthesia ran low.

The hospital's remaining staffers got creative, making beds and crutches out of wood and using clothes instead of gauze for makeshift splints.

The war moves on and support does, too

Fighting has shifted away from the Khartoum area. Some funding-strained organizations that supported Eltaeb's hospital now assist places more in need.

He said there is enough money until June to pay salaries and keep generators running, but they will need some $40,000 a month for the hospital to function.

While some countries have pledged support to help Sudan's reconstruction, there's concern the war with Iran might divert attention and resources.

Hospitals that were hit harder than Al Nao lie in ruins and need much more.

Across town, Dr. Osman Ismail Osman, director of Al Shaabi hospital, said the several hundred thousand dollars the government has provided is a drop in the bucket.

The RSF occupied his hospital during the war. Dusty, broken medical equipment worth millions of dollars is piled up, and chunks of concrete are scattered with metal beds.

The goal of opening the badly damaged hospital for emergency referrals within weeks is ambitious, but medical workers like Eltaeb have learned how to approach the impossible.

“I believe I did my best as a doctor as a Sudanese,” the surgeon said.

Features

Dealing with the Dead in the Ruins of Sudan’s War

This photo taken on April 18, 2026 shows Sudanese Ali Gebbai, a volunteer responsible for handling burial procedures for unidentified bodies in the capital, Khartoum, examines one of the unidentified corpses at the mortuary of Omdurman's Al-Nao Educational Hospital. (AFP)
This photo taken on April 18, 2026 shows Sudanese Ali Gebbai, a volunteer responsible for handling burial procedures for unidentified bodies in the capital, Khartoum, examines one of the unidentified corpses at the mortuary of Omdurman's Al-Nao Educational Hospital. (AFP)
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Dealing with the Dead in the Ruins of Sudan’s War

This photo taken on April 18, 2026 shows Sudanese Ali Gebbai, a volunteer responsible for handling burial procedures for unidentified bodies in the capital, Khartoum, examines one of the unidentified corpses at the mortuary of Omdurman's Al-Nao Educational Hospital. (AFP)
This photo taken on April 18, 2026 shows Sudanese Ali Gebbai, a volunteer responsible for handling burial procedures for unidentified bodies in the capital, Khartoum, examines one of the unidentified corpses at the mortuary of Omdurman's Al-Nao Educational Hospital. (AFP)

At a makeshift morgue in Khartoum, engineer turned mortician Ali Gebbai clicked through a spreadsheet of the dead. Thousands of entries, each with a photo and burial site, keep a harrowing record of Sudan's war.

Every time the team of volunteers finds a body, they post to social media and wait 72 hours in the hopes that the victim's loved ones will come across the picture and claim the person.

"We photograph every body. We check if there's anything in their pockets to help us identify them, and we mark the spot where we buried them," Gebbai told AFP.

It was a blazing April day and a dead woman lay on the ground of the small, air-conditioned room in the Sudanese capital, her brown-speckled thobe pulled over her face and body.

If no one came to identify her, the team would prepare a clean white shroud, wash her according to Muslim custom and bury her nearby.

It is all anyone in Khartoum can hope for by way of a morgue. And it is far more than what most victims of Sudan's war receive: a shallow grave, hastily dug into the dirt where they fell.

The conflict, now in its fourth year, between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has no confirmed toll, though it has killed at least tens of thousands, and aid workers give estimates of more than 200,000.

"It's disheartening, all these estimations. When you have a population not knowing what has happened, that trauma and the impact cannot be overlooked," Jose Luis Pozo Gil, the International Committee of the Red Cross's deputy Sudan chief, told AFP.

In the year since the army recaptured Khartoum, authorities have exhumed and reburied "around 28,000 people", Hisham Zein al-Abdeen, head of forensic medicine at Sudan's health ministry, told AFP. And they have only cleared a little over half the capital.

Gebbai said he and his teams have buried 7,000 dead since the war began.

Ethnic massacres in Darfur, meanwhile, have killed thousands of people at a time, and this year alone at least 700 died in drone strikes on Kordofan.

- Morgues destroyed -

Across the country, there is nowhere to store the dead, and no way to count them.

During the worst massacres, when firebombs tear through mosques and markets, rescuers routinely run out of shrouds. The dead are buried where they lay, wrapped in their own clothes or plastic bags, often in villages with no clinic to speak of, much less a morgue that can send information to a central authority.

Zein al-Abdeen, one of only two forensic doctors in Khartoum, said the capital's morgues "were already full before the war".

According to the ICRC, Khartoum's four morgues were all forced out of service by the war, but the dead remained inside.

"When we went inside the Omdurman morgue, there were still many bodies. And there hadn't been any electricity for a long time -- you can imagine the state," Pozo Gil said.

The Omdurman morgue was "completely destroyed" in a strike, Zein al-Abdeen said, its compressors looted while bodies lay rotting everywhere they looked.

His team has been exhuming Khartoum's dead for a year, focusing on "those buried in shallow graves, in public spaces, in sewers and along the Nile".

As bullets flew and artillery arched over the river to crash into homes and hospitals, trapped civilians could not reach the next street over, much less the cemetery. So people buried their loved ones in courtyards, at playgrounds and on street corners.

Over three years, it turned Khartoum into an open-air graveyard.

"That leaves a mark on society, it destroys human dignity and it normalizes death," Zein al-Abdeen said.

The same is true for the rest of Sudan: in Darfur, where pools of blood could be seen in satellite images; in al-Jazira, where bodies were dumped in canals; and in Kordofan, where killer drones still stalk civilians.

- Finding the missing -

Most of those exhumed and reburied in Khartoum are identified, Zein al-Abdeen said, by families who buried their loved ones themselves but needed authorities to give them a proper resting place.

But many are not. From every anonymous body, authorities remove a small bone or a piece of hair, in hopes they will one day be identified. But Sudan has no working DNA labs to test the samples, and nowhere to store them until then.

"The safest place to keep the DNA samples is buried separately in the ground, and marked clearly," Zein al-Abdeen told AFP, "or we'll exhume the bodies again later."

According to the ICRC, there are at least 11,000 missing persons in Sudan.

"We know that the lack of closure for families leaves an open wound. In any kind of recovery in the future, in order to find closure, to rebuild trust, the issue of the missing has to be addressed," Pozo Gil said.

Gebbai the mortician spoke with steely-eyed resolve, but it began to crack when he remembered one young man.

"He was looking for his father and his uncle for over a year. When he came to us, he found out they had both been shot dead in the street in the early weeks of the war. It broke him, he collapsed and cried for a long time."

But at last, at least, he could visit their graves.

Features

A Lesson from 1915 … Why the Strait of Hormuz Can’t be Taken by Force

FILE PHOTO: Strait of Hormuz map is seen in this illustration taken April 15, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Strait of Hormuz map is seen in this illustration taken April 15, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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A Lesson from 1915 … Why the Strait of Hormuz Can’t be Taken by Force

FILE PHOTO: Strait of Hormuz map is seen in this illustration taken April 15, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Strait of Hormuz map is seen in this illustration taken April 15, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

The debate over reopening the Strait of Hormuz represents one of the most sensitive issues in politics and security. As questions continue to grow about why US President Donald Trump did not take practical steps to remove the obstacles blocking the vital passageway, this discussion sheds light on the nature of the military challenges that make any attempt to open it by force extremely dangerous, especially given the presence of non traditional threats such as naval mines and warfare.

The answer as to why nothing has been done to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is simple, according to The Independent.

As his advisers will have told Trump before he attacked Iran, it is almost impossible to clear a passage through a minefield when the shoreline is held by the enemy, without being prepared to take significant casualties. And this, it seems, the US is not prepared to do.

It is one thing to bomb a less technologically sophisticated enemy from the air, but quite another to get involved in a real fight at sea level with an opponent who has been planning this form of asymmetric warfare for a very long time.

 

A satellite image shows a fleet of small boats at sea, north of the Strait of Hormuz near the Kargan coast, Iran, April 22, 2026. European Union/Copernicus Sentinel-2/Handout via REUTERS

According to the British newspaper, history gives a stark lesson on why America needs to tread warily – a page from the First World War.

It was March 1915. The “straits” concerned were the Dardanelles – the narrow passage linking the Mediterranean to the Black Sea and giving access to Istanbul. The Turks were the defenders, the British and the French the attackers.

They were in the middle of a shooting war. A vital waterway, which would normally be open for the world’s commerce, was closed because of the actions of Türkiye, the bordering power. The coastline was heavily defended, and there was a high probability that mines had been laid to block the channel.

A decision was made by the British and French that the straits were to be reopened by force – and a very considerable force was assembled for that purpose.

It comprised no fewer than 14 “capital” ships (in those days “battleships” and “battlecruisers”) supported by escorts and a large force of minesweepers.

The plan was a good one. The capital ships would stand off in clear water and bombard the shore defenses. When these had been silenced, the minesweepers would go ahead and sweep another clear area.

The capital ships would then move forward again into swept water and recommence their bombardment – successive waves of big ships moving up, but always into water which had been swept for mines. In this way, the whole channel would be cleared, and the straits reopened.

The big push commenced on 18 March 1915. To start with, it all went well. Four capital ships – HM ships Queen Elizabeth, Agamemnon, Lord Nelson and Inflexible – formed the first attacking line.

The second line was composed of four French ships, Gaulois, Charlemagne, Bouvet and Suffren. They, in turn, were to be supported by six more British ships – HM ships Ocean, Irresistible, Albion, Vengeance, Swiftsure and Majestic – which would form a third line to pass through and relieve the French in line two.

The bombardment was started by the RN ships in line one at 11am. By 12.20pm, the French ships of line two had steamed through the first line to take up their advanced positions.

By 1.45pm, the fire from the shore batteries had slackened under the onslaught of the guns of the eight capital ships, and it was deemed safe enough to send in the minesweepers for the next phase. The third line of six ships was also called up to move the force forward.

However, 15 minutes later, everything started to go wrong. FS Bouvet hit a mine, and in a matter of minutes, she capsized and sank. There were only 75 survivors out of a ship’s company of 718.

The action continued. HMS Irresistible of the third wave was bombarding the forts when she, in turn, struck a mine at 3.14pm. She developed a severe list but continued with the action until she hit another mine, and her main engines were put out of action completely.

An attempt was made to take her in tow, but the situation was hopeless, and the order was given to abandon ship. More than 600 men were taken to safety.

 

The Epaminondas ship is seen during seizure by the Revolutionary Guard Corps in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran, in this image obtained by Reuters on April 24, 2026. Meysam Mirzadeh/Tasnim/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

Meanwhile, shortly after 4pm, HMS Inflexible struck a mine. She remained capable of steaming slowly and was ordered to withdraw. However, she had a 30ft x 26ft hole below the waterline and had to be beached to save her from sinking. She was later towed to Malta for repairs and was out of action for three months.

After these disasters, Vice-Admiral John de Robeck, the British admiral in charge of the Allied naval forces during the crucial stages of the campaign, finally decided that the waters which had been considered to be safe and swept of mines were anything but.

Accordingly, at 5.50pm, less than seven hours into the operation, he signalled a “General Recall” to withdraw the ships and return to the safe waters outside the straits.

Fifteen minutes later, at 6.05pm, HMS Ocean struck another mine, developed a major list and was deemed not to be capable of being saved. The ship’s company were taken off and she was left to her fate. Both Irresistible and Ocean later sank.

Fourteen major warships had attempted to force the straits. Within four hours, three of them had been sunk and one had been so badly damaged that she was out of action.

This one day of disaster was the end of trying to take the Dardanelles passage by solely naval means. The attempt was never repeated.