“When something happens, in the first place we run to the store to buy buckwheat and sugar”

MOSCOW Thursday morning shopping mall in Gagarinsk, Moscow. There are also a lot of people shopping on a weekday morning. Some of the customers coming from the shopping center say that they have noticed an increase in prices.

– I bought sugar before 40 rubles, now the cheapest is 65 rubles, he says Igor Nikolaevich.

At the current rate of 65 rubles is just over 60 cents. At the time of the interview, for example, the sugar shelf of the Auchan supermarket in the mall was filled with flour, and only coconut sugar was available at a price of around seven euros.

– We are such that when something happens, we run to the store to buy buckwheat and sugar, says Nadezhda Pavlovna.

JanThe man in his name, on the other hand, says the coffee has become more expensive. You don’t even want to find everything in the store, because many people are now hoarding products.

– There is a shortage of hygiene products. That’s my girlfriend’s problem, says Jan.

Andrei is on the defensive. He feels that a Finnish journalist is trying to force a bad picture of the economic situation:

– I don’t see any speculation or rising prices. It is your dream.

However, the Russian Federal Statistical Service disagrees. For several weeks, it has documented a sharp rise in prices in its bulletins.

In other consumer goods, the increase was smaller: fruit and vegetables, among other things, rose by an average of 3.8 per cent a week, rice by an average of 3.9 per cent and buckwheat by an average of 3.3 per cent.

The price of sanitary napkins has risen by five per cent a week, the price of nappies and laundry soap by four per cent and the price of toilet paper by three per cent. The prices of medicines rose by a couple of percent in a week.

The prices of consumer durables also rose: for example, the prices of Russian cars rose by 7.4 per cent a week. Gasoline and diesel prices, on the other hand, remained almost unchanged, rising 0.1 percent per week.

Public transport tickets and the price of rental housing rose by a few per cent.

There are interesting details in the price survey. Among other things, it measures the development of the price of holiday trips to Turkey. Their price rose by 9.7 per cent in a week.

There are several factors behind this. Many foreign manufacturers have now closed down in Russia.

Another big factor is the depreciation of the ruble. Its value has fallen 22 percent this year. The weakening of the ruble will inevitably raise the prices of imported products.

On Wednesday, the president Vladimir Putin said it would support the value of the ruble so that Russia would start selling natural gas to “unfriendly countries” in the ruble in the future. The announcement raised the value of the currency, at least momentarily, as did the price of natural gas.

Russia supplies about 40 percent of the natural gas used by European countries and two-thirds of Finland’s natural gas.