‘We’ll just use parallel import. What’s the problem?’: Russian business ombudsman on Coca-Cola’s decision to leave Russian market

Russia’s Presidential Commissioner for Entrepreneurs' Rights Boris Titov stated during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) that Coca-Cola products can be imported into Russia using the mechanism of parallel import.

“We can easily import Coca-Cola products using parallel import, buying them through Alibaba for example. What’s the problem?” Titov said in an interview with TASS.

He noted that importing technological equipment using the same mechanism is more complicated.

“I think importing aircraft spare parts will be impossible using parallel import. It will be possible for cars, as there are huge depots of spare parts: gearboxes, oil filters and so on, which are not included in unified databases. In the Middle East, there are entire spare part hubs of many car companies,” Titov explained.

This week, the Coca-Cola Company announced that it would pull its products from the Russian market. Back in March, the company suspended its business in Russia over the war in Ukraine. According to Yale University, over a thousand companies have scaled down their business activity in Russia to various extents for the same reason. Some of these companies stopped all their operations in the country.