Videos of Russian supermarkets on YouTube

[TheFugitive]

I've noticed in surfing around YouTube that it seems to be overrun these days with videos giving tours of supermarkets and hypermarkets in Russia.

The tours are generally guided by an English-speaking expat from Britain or Australia or someplace and they walk you through aisle by aisle to show you the assortment of items being sold and their cost.  The stores are amazingly similar to Aldi or Costco here in the US and show an abundance of product (food especially) that a guy like me who lived through the Cold War could not have imagined being available to average people in Russia.

In some cases the prices being quoted were significantly lower than what you'd pay for these items in the U.S.

It is generally thought that this surge of videos of Russian supermarkets is part of a propaganda effort by the Putin government to demonstrate that they aren't really being hurt much by international sanctions that have been imposed on them due to the invasion of Ukraine.  After all the Russians do have a long history of that sort of thing, so there is probably some truth to this.  Although there are so many of these videos out there from so many different regions of the country it's hard to imagine the stores have all been pimped for the benefit of a global audience.

The main thing you notice that is likely the result of sanctions is that well-known American brands like Pepsi have disappeared from the shelves and have been replaced by domestic Russian brands.  Though not all.  I did see some Nescafe coffee and Heinz ketchup in a couple of these videos.