Coca-Cola, Zara, IKEA have announced their withdrawal from Russian market, but their products still available in Russia

Reuters reported the information.

"Trucks carrying Coca Cola roll across the border into Russia, tourists return from abroad laden with Zara's latest designs, and local online marketplaces snap up IKEA's furniture stocks. Western brands may have left the country, but their goods haven't," the journalists said.

Thus, Reuters reports on several mechanisms of how Russians are trying to minimize the impact of restrictions on the supply of imported goods.

In particular, it is claimed that after the destruction of supply chains, Russia legalized "parallel imports," allowing retailers to import goods from abroad without the permission of the brand owner.

"There are pages on Instagram, on Telegram, there are girls I know who moved to live in Europe or Istanbul or Dubai. They collect orders, let's say in Istanbul, they take 15-30 per cent (as commission), then get them delivered here and you pay for the delivery," a source in Russia told a journalist.

The Russian market leader Wildberries sells old stock of Inditex brands and has almost 17,000 items in its Zara catalog. A source close to Inditex said that these were the cleared stocks that were in Russia when the company suspended operations there.

One of the common Western products sold by Wildberries and its counterparts is Coca-Cola, which is often advertised as imported so that customers know it is the real thing.

While the Coca-Cola Co. stopped producing and selling the drinks in Russia last year, they were imported, with labels on cans and bottles stating that they came from Europe, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and China.

• Earlier, a joint investigation by the Insider, Le Monde, and Bellingcat found that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Russian branch of the French Auchan has been supplying goods to the Russian military on the occupied territories of Ukraine under the guise of "humanitarian aid" to the civilian population. The goods in question were both from Auchan warehouses and collected on the territory of the chain's stores in different regions of Russia. It has also been established that the Russian Auchan helped military enlistment offices recruit mobilized people from among its employees.

• The French supermarket chain Auchan denies that it supplied goods to Russian military personnel in the occupied regions of Ukraine during the war.