The Russian president has admitted that sanctions imposed by “unfriendly countries” have “impacted businesses” and “complicated the logistics of foreign and domestic supplies,” and there are indications those supplies include things as basic as bananas.

Under the anxious headline, “From bananas to coffee: what will happen to foreign products in our stores and what products will disappear from the shelves,” an article in the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda points to a dearth of imported foodstuffs that Russians and Muscovites in particular had taken for granted before Vladimir Putin decided to pick a fight with Ukraine and earn the scorn of the free world.  

“Since we are not able to make carrots and cabbage cheaper, now bananas have become more expensive,” the chairman of the Consumers Union of Russia, Petr Shelishch, told that newspaper. 

That is, if Russian consumers can find them. The reason that “the situation with bananas” is “alarming” is because of the choke on imports. Most of Russia’s bananas come from Ecuador, but for several weeks now Latin American cargo and logistics companies have refused to transport them. Those that do make it across the ocean are tangled up in European ports closed to Russian shipping. 

Correspondingly, the price of bananas has jumped in recent weeks by about 73 cents, whereas the price of carrots has increased by 24 cents. 

A fifth of Ecuador’s banana crop typically goes to Russia and Ukraine — and the Ukrainian port of Odessa is currently blockaded. Before the war Quito was selling nearly $700 million worth of bananas to Russia a year; now millions of crates are going unsold. 

The executive director of the Association of Ecuador Banana Exporters, José Antonio Hidalgo, told the website FreshFruitPortal that “the problem is the volume we have on these markets, it’s hard and takes time to grow at that level in the short term in a new market,” adding that “while this is a business risk, extraordinary effects of a war, that does not stop it from having a significant social impact in our country.” The Ecuadorian banana industry employs about 250,000 people, Mr. Hidalgo said.

Mr. Putin’s remarks about the impact of sanctions were made during televised remarks on Monday, the same day that Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, warned in a blog post that an estimated 200,000 people are at risk of losing their jobs because of sanctions related to Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine.

In the meantime, shopping in Moscow, once considered something of an adventure, is now exceedingly appealing — if you’re a zombie, that is.

The Moscow Times, one of the few remaining independent media voices in Russia, reports that in the elite GUM shopping arcade on Red Square, outlets for Western designer brands like Fendi and Louis Vuitton have shuttered because of corporate opposition to the war. Clothes and jewelry can be seen inside the locked shops, but not touched, and the mall’s empty corridors are still brightly lit and soundtracked by loud music. 

Back at the supermarket, availability of vegetables is less of a problem because Russia supplies 87 percent of its own, according to its agriculture ministry. Citrus fruits are also more widely available than tropical fruits, as many are imported from Turkey. 

Supply issues are dogging coffee too; Italian coffee roaster Lavazza suspended its Russian operations last month. In the least startling Russian revelation of the day, Komsomolskaya Pravda noted that coffee “does not grow in Russia.”