They did. This was an unfortunate reality for Finnish telecom companies before the Ukraine war. Russia was an obvious market and a company looking for profit would be practically forced to try to work there.

As for Jolla, this is about the timeline:

2014 Russia attacks Crimea, temporarily occupies it

2016 Jolla grants Sailfish license to a private Open Mobile Platform LLC in Russia

2018 Rostelecom (state-owned Russian company) buys Open Mobile Platform

2020 Sailfish license to Rostelecom ends

2021 Jolla ceases all business in Russia -- at this point Rostelecom owns 32% of Jolla either directly or via subsidiaries

2022 Russia attacks rest of Ukraine in February

2022 Jolla starts dislodging from Russian ownership. Negotations with russian owners unsuccessful.

2023 Jollyboys Oy is formed, business restructuring of Jolla starts to move assets there

2024 Jolla files for bankruptcy to get finally rid of rest of the problematic ownership

So the current company around the new Jolla phone is technically a new company and has none of the previous baggage, but retains most of the non-russian owners and staff of Jolla.

The time between 2014-2022 was of course kind of problematic, but that was the reality in Europe. We still widely and naively gave Russia the benefit of the doubt back then. It seems to me that after Russia started the war in 2022, Jolla started immediately moving away from there.

Sources:

https://www.is.fi/taloussanomat/art-2000010451277.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolla

https://suomimobiili.fi/jollyboys-oy-ostaa-sailfish-os-kaytt...