Most Russians know Petrovka Street in Moscow as home to the headquarters of the city’s police force but these days it is also a magnet for well-heeled Muscovites.
Behind the elegant facades of this historic 14th-century thoroughfare lie some of the capital’s smartest restaurants, trendiest nightspots and most expensive stores and boutiques.
One of these is an outpost of the Italian luxury fashion brand Brunello Cucinelli.
Like many major Western retail outlets, it is meant to be closed as part of the sanctions imposed on Russia after Vladimir Putin‘s invasion of Ukraine.
Polina Pushkareva, 27, a New-York based Russian influencer and lingerie entrepreneur, played the role of social media detective on a trip back to her motherland
She revealed how a Brunello Cucinelli boutique in Moscow is open and closed at the same time
But a doughty Instagrammer recently revealed that the store is, in fact, open to some customers. Polina Pushkareva, 27, a New-York based Russian influencer and lingerie entrepreneur, played the role of social media detective on a trip back to her motherland.
‘This is Brunello Cucinelli,’ she began in a video featuring her standing outside the supposedly abandoned store, complete with a ‘Closed’ sign on the front door. ‘It looks closed on the first glance, but when you come closer, it’s fully lit up.
‘It has all the clothes, all the accessories fully displayed, and all the mannequins wear the newest collection. Let’s use simple logic here. Why would brands pay a very expensive rent in the city centre of Moscow for two years if they left the country?’
Her deductions might have impressed the former Soviet Union’s favourite fictional detective, Colonel Vladimir Sharapov, who operated from the police HQ up the road.
The Italian luxury fashion brand Brunello Cucinelli shop in Petrovka Street, Moscow
As she surveys the buzz of activity inside the store, she adds: ‘I think they’re just selling s*** under the table because there is no f****** way they somehow imported the newest collection just for nothing. I think I’m 100 per cent correct because while we’re recording the video, a woman inside was trying on stuff there. So that’s the reality of the sanctions. So nice!’
A spokeswoman for Brunello Cucinelli said ‘We fully comply with all existing regulations’, adding that their local employees ‘are only providing customer care and style advice to our loyal customers’.
The store Pushkareva stumbled across is just one of many Western brands that appear to be continuing to trade in Russia despite the international boycott of Putin’s pariah regime sparked by his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
But, as we shall see, it is unclear to what extent such operations have the blessing of their Western parents.
‘We’ve been supplying iPhones and will continue to supply them,’ a shop assistant at the store told the Mail last month
There is certainly little outward sign of the boycott on Petrovka Street and in the city’s gleaming shopping centres. Quite the reverse: many products manufactured by brands that officially joined the exodus now appear to be finding their way back into what remains, after all, a lucrative foreign market.
Take Apple. The new iPhone 16 is on prominent display at a former official Apple ‘re-seller’, the re:Store shop close to the Kremlin.
‘We’ve been supplying iPhones and will continue to supply them,’ a shop assistant at the store told the Mail last month, waving aside any concerns about sanctions.
He confessed he didn’t ‘know how exactly the goods are imported’ but urged our undercover reporter to place an order now for delivery in early October.
Admittedly, the cost of £1,575 is considerably more than in the UK but that won’t put off a wealthy Russian desperate to get hold of the latest must-have Western accessory.
For its part, Apple says it has ‘paused all product sales in Russia’ but a source at the firm admitted that there’s not much they can do if a private buyer imports their devices into the country.
And that appears to be what’s happening at re:Store, a former official Apple ‘reseller’. The US brand’s products appear to be bought in countries not affected by sanctions and then taken into Russia.Â
When the Mail visited a branch of ‘Motherbear’, it found a wide range of babywear and toddler clothing displaying the distinctive Mothercare label
This system has become so sophisticated that, when Apple’s Vision Pro – a revolutionary 3D camera – was launched in February in the US market, it was available in Moscow within a matter of days.
Something similar appears to be happening with Mothercare products. In 2022, this staple of the British High Street gradually extricated itself from Russia – where it had been well established with around 120 stores.
The official line was that the shops were bought by a Russian businessman, who rebranded them ‘Motherbear’, sold the UK retailer’s remaining stock and then started bringing in less prestigious lines from places such as Belarus.
But when the Mail visited a branch of ‘Motherbear’, it found a wide range of babywear and toddler clothing displaying the distinctive Mothercare label.
A pack of three infant sleepsuits, for instance, was selling for 3,999 roubles – or £32. When the Mail asked why Mothercare goods were on sale despite the boycott, an assistant shrugged and said: ‘Just be happy.’
The company insists its franchise partner exited the Russian market completely in 2022, but concedes that ‘occasionally, across the business, third parties are used to clear old stock lines. However, none . . . are based in Russia, and the volumes are very small’.
Hugo Boss is another Western retailer that hightailed it out of Russia shortly after the invasion, which now appears to have made a return.
The German luxury fashion brand closed its stores, stopped advertising and suspended online sales to the Russian market.
A Hugo Boss store at the sprawling Evropeysky shopping mall near Moscow’s Kievsky railway station
Yet, now it is seemingly back, with two stores recently opened at the sprawling Evropeysky shopping mall near Moscow’s Kievsky railway station and more said to be in the pipeline.
So is the range on offer the real thing? It would certainly appear so. The two new outlets look to be offering genuine imported merchandise without, for now, the brand’s suit range.
Despite its closure of outlets at the outbreak of the war, Hugo Boss was criticised by B4Ukraine, a coalition urging Western companies to cut ties to Russia, over continuing wholesale supplies. This meant Russians have never been truly without their beloved Boss.
In a statement, the firm says it is ‘no longer present in Russia with its own legal entity’, explaining that the re-opened stores are operated by a former wholesale partner that bought the Russian subsidiary of Hugo Boss.
And that partner, Stockmann, is probably doing very well indeed. One of Putin’s ways of punishing Western brands that abandoned the Russian market was to insist that they sold their Russian assets at a mandatory discount of 50 per cent.
Another company, Paul Smith, was exposed in January 2023 by the Mail as still, at the time, openly trading in Russia. This led to an abrupt announcement that the brand would be leaving – and, at first sight, it seemed to have done so.
Its outlet at the GUM mall – an ornate neo-classical edifice on Red Square with a glass roof built by 19th-century Scottish engineer William Bouch – has vanished.
Some Paul Smith merchandise is, however, available online through other sellers, such as wholesaler Stockmann, which means socks, underwear, T-shirts, shorts, trainers and sweatshirts reach grateful fashion-conscious Russians.
Retail platform Ozon also advertises Paul Smith perfumes, bags, belts and T-shirts. The luxury retailer says is has never dealt directly with the two stockists but admits that ‘independent entities’ and ‘resellers’ are ‘beyond our control’.
Heritage and lifestyle clothing brand Barbour refused to ship its goods to Russia in the wake of the war, yet some products, such as its quilted jackets, are still finding their way to British Room, an Anglophile chain also known as British Trend, which has outlets in Moscow and St Petersburg.
The company failed to respond to a request for comment.
British fashion giant Burberry suspended operations in Russia at the start of the war, yet the Mail found what looked – to all intents and purposes – like a fully functioning Burberry outlet, inside the Gothic-revival style TsUM department store on Petrovka, seen as the Harrods of Moscow.
‘We’re up to speed with the UK,’ bragged an assistant pointing to a batch of recently arrived polo shirts.
Approached by the Mail, Burberry claimed it takes sanctions compliance ‘very seriously’ and said it will be ‘holding a thorough investigation to try to discover the source of this supply to ensure this stops’.
Also intensely popular is Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley’s lingerie retailer Agent Provocateur.
The brand, founded by Vivienne Westwood’s son Joe Corre, boasts a strong online presence but also more than a dozen stores: ten in Moscow, including outlets at GUM and TsUM, and one apiece in St Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don (barely 100 miles from the front line) and the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
Underwear on display inside an Agent Provocateur store at GUM in Moscow
‘I don’t know how the delivery of goods is organised, but we are almost in sync with London, practically to the day,’ gloated sales assistant Ekaterina. ‘Previously [during the war], supplies were arriving once every three months. Now, they are far more frequent.’
Approached by the Mail, Agent Provocateur did not respond.
Russian fashion victims are not the only people gaining access to premium international brands. Petrolheads are too.
A seller of Rolls-Royce saloons operates from a ground-floor showroom at the Radisson Collection Hotel on the Moscow River, a Stalinist skyscraper that was known, for most of its existence, as the Ukraine Hotel.
‘We can take orders to assemble any car if it’s not in stock,’ claimed sales rep Denis. ‘The waiting period is give or take six months. If you place an order now in September, it will be ready by February, and April would be the expected delivery in Moscow. This is the average situation.’
He gave a wry smile when the subject of delivery routes was raised and did not want to get into specifics. But he was clear: ‘We’re importing cars again. They are coming in, and we now expect frequent deliveries.’
A UK-based Rolls-Royce spokesperson said: ‘We do not have any authorised dealerships in Russia and ceased production and supply of motor cars for the Russian market in late February 2022… Any car that has been imported into Russia since has done so without our permission, knowledge, or support.’
Meanwhile, at the Bentley showroom — in the shadow of the headquarters of Putin’s feared FSB, successor to the communist-era KGB — one of the cars for sale is a brand-new Continental GT V8 S, priced at 40 million roubles, or £322,000.
In spite of this, the firm says it ‘fully supports all trade sanctions’ and any models imported into Russia have been done so ‘without our support or knowledge’.
The cars would appear to come under the category of ‘parallel imports’, a Putin-era invention that allows Russian businesses to source and import goods without the permission of the trademark owner.
This tactic is now widely used and probably explains the rising availability of prestigious goods the West thought it had banned. It is difficult for manufacturers to monitor this as a result.
As a Sky News report last month showed, high-end cars are pouring into Russia via a pass through the Caucasus mountains from Georgia. They cross at the Lars checkpoint, through which many Russians, fearing the prospect of conscription, have fled in the opposite direction.
These are mainly Range Rovers and Lamborghinis, which lorries deposit at a car park on the Georgian side of the border.
They then evade customs by being driven into Russia by individuals passing them off as their own private cars. This wheeze has seen luxury car sales from the UK to Georgia and Azerbaijan increase substantially since the war began.
But cars are finding their way into Russia via other land and sea routes, such as through the United Arab Emirates, China and even Japan.
Lamborghini said in a statement: ‘We do not operate in Russia… The subsequent import and sale of pre-owned cars is not controlled by the manufacturer.’
And Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) says that an ongoing internal investigation has revealed that the cars in question were not sold to retailers in Georgia, but to those in countries that do not share a border with Russia, and that JLR continues ‘to counter the efforts of third parties seeking to circumvent sanctions against Russia and Belarus’.
Clearly, many Western retailers are not complicit in the sale of their goods to Russia. They face constant challenge to prevent the importation of their products.
Often, such sales are enabled by online marketplaces such as Wildberries — known as the Russian Amazon — or other platforms like Ozone and Avito. Enterprising personal shoppers in third countries use these routes and more to sell goods to Russians.
‘My name is Anastasia and I offer you prompt ordering of adult and children’s clothing, shoes, accessories in the shops of Turkey,’ says the advertisement of one supplier.
She explains how she buys online to order in Turkey from the likes of Zara, H&M, GAP, Massimo Dutti, Nike, US Polo, Mango, Bershka, Oysho ‘and any other shops at your request’ – then ships the goods to Russia for clients. ‘I also buy from Next, iHerb, Farfetch through Kazakhstan.’
Others claim to buy in the UK and ship to Russia without the knowledge of the manufacturer.
Prominent, too, in Moscow is former Crown jeweller Garrard, with no less than 121 different jewellery items on sale at TsUM, and more available at Mercury outlets.
The company has previously said that it has not supplied any product to Russia since the war started. It says that the stock on sale arrived before the war.
So there is much choice for the Russian consumer to toast as the Christmas season begins. And they needn’t confine themselves to vodka.
As we found last month, there is also no shortage of Scotch whisky on sale, even in some of the most far-flung outposts of Putin’s empire. Visiting outlets in Siberia, the Mail found a wide range of single malts, bottled during the war, and before.
For example, a bottle of ten-year-old Laphroaig Islay single malt whisky that might sell for up to £45 in the UK was available in ‘sanctions-hit’ Russia for a modest mark-up of £56. Laphroaig failed to respond to a request for comment.
A Macallan 15-year-old Old Double Cask – on sale for up to £150 in Britain – could keep a Siberian warm for the price of £227.
For its part, the distillery’s owners Edrington insist it has ‘fully exited Russia’, having stopped shipments since February 2022.
But, clearly, glasses are still clinking all across Russia, for there is much to celebrate in a country where Western goods are still widely available despite the imposition of sanctions.
Additional reporting by Simon Trump
