“Never before has one company’s failure had such a devastating effect on the world,” wrote the technology journalist David Kirkpatrick recently. He continued: Racists, autocrats, and purveyors of hate and disorder have found Facebook the perfect medium for spewing poison, normalizing it, and…

The story I’m about to tell is one of those tales that make you wonder why anybody does business in Russia. It’s a country that really doesn’t play by anybody’s rules but its own. Sometimes, these stories involve huge companies like BP Plc, which, you may recall, once had a joint venture with a…