Butter locked up in Russian supermarket

With the mentioned price, butter in Russia is converted about the same price as in the Dutch supermarket, but still everything is different. Butter is also expensive for the Dutch consumer, but food only makes up a small part of the monthly expenditure, in Russia a large part of the income of households is spent on food and purchasing power is much lower. Moreover, the country is dealing with a screaming inflation because of the war with Ukraine and Western sanctions for that.

According to Rosstat, the Russian CBS, the price of butter has risen by more than 1% since January 25st until the end of October. The product is also scarce. According to Soyuzmoloko, the Russian dairy organization, this is due to the high demand from the ice cream and cheese industries, but the limited import also seems to play a role. Some 20.000 tons were recently imported from Turkey, but this did not help much. Butter remains scarce and expensive.

However, the product remains very popular, so much so that shoplifting is becoming an increasing problem. Sometimes, dozens of packages of butter are sent out unpaid. Supermarkets respond to this by locking up butter in refrigerated display cases, according to Russian media reports. There, the product is placed next to other expensive and scarce products such as caviar.

Earlier, Russia faced an egg shortage and President Putin was forced to apologize for it on national TV.
Butter, by the way, is not the fastest-rising food item this year, the Moscow Times reports. Potatoes have risen in price by more than 56% since the beginning of the year.