Adidas has closed its Russian stores and online shopping in the wake of the Ukraine invasion ©Getty Images

German sportswear group Adidas has joined Nike and Bavarian neighbours Puma in temporarily closing its stores in Russia and shutting its online shop, joining a growing list of companies suspending their activities following the invasion of Ukraine.

German carmakers Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes-Benz have also taken similar action in recent days.

Adidas said in a statement late Monday that it would "suspend the operations of our stores and our e-commerce site in Russia until further notice" but continue to pay its employees, AFP reports.

Adidas, which had already suspended its longstanding kit deal with the Russian Football Union, has now closed stores and online shopping in the country ©Getty Images
Adidas, which had already suspended its longstanding kit deal with the Russian Football Union, has now closed stores and online shopping in the country ©Getty Images

The outfitter has already suspended its kit deal with the Russian Football Union, a partnership, going back to 2008.

Adidas has around 500 locations in Russia and other former Soviet republics out of a total of 2,168 worldwide, employing around 7,000 people in the region, a spokesman for the company told AFP on Tuesday.

At the end of 2020, sales in the Russian market made up 2.9 percent of Adidas’s total revenues.

The sporting goods company, based in Herzogenaurach in Bavaria, has a long history in Russia, where it has supplied teams since the 1960s, founding a local subsidiary in 1992 after the end of the Soviet Union.