Moscow might bring back foreigner-only shop

Red Square, Moscow. Image by Bernt Rostad / CC BY 2.0

Russian authorities are considering opening a duty-free store in Moscow that would cater to foreign diplomats and international organisations’ employees. In the USSR, foreigners as well as members of the country’s elite could shop in specialised stores for high-end goods. This chain of shops was known as Beryozka and has been closed for more than two decades. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, imported goods have been widely available to ordinary citizens in Russia, but Western food imports were banned by the government in August in response to EU and US sanctions against Moscow. Read more: rferl.org