Following Nike‘s decision to halt sales to Russia shortly after the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago, an online sports retailer owned by Russia’s Zenit soccer club, footballstore.ru, continues to offer dozens of Nike-branded items, including the US sportswear maker‘s Phantom GT2 Elite soccer boots for around USD 330.
Wijnand Herinckx, a 40-year-old Dutch citizen residing in Moscow, has established a thriving business that supplies Russian consumers with Western goods from companies that have withdrawn from Russia. Herinckx said, “Nike does not want their products to be shipped to Russia,” but added, “They are also not telling us not to do it.”
According to a report from Reuters, both Nike and Lego informed that they have not authorised Herinckx’s imports of their products to Russia. Reuters discovered that Herinckx’s business obtains branded goods, including Nike and Lego, by using intermediaries with no apparent connection to Russia as buyers, then shipping the goods to Russia, often via Turkey, and finally delivering them to retailers in Russia.
While Western governments’ restrictions have primarily targeted industrial products that could be used to build weapons for Russia’s war machine, companies like Herinckx’s are indirectly supporting the Russian economy by providing consumers with access to foreign goods they have grown accustomed to since the collapse of communism. Customs data analysed by Reuters revealed that the value of Nike products imported to Russia plummeted 81 per cent in 2022 to USD 21 million but rebounded in 2023 to at least USD 74 million.
Legal specialists suggest that seeking recourse under Russian law would be challenging for Western brands, leaving few other legal options for enforcing intellectual property rights typically tied to the territory where the infringement occurred. The availability of Western brands allows Russian President Vladimir Putin to “project a message that the war does not undermine the ‘normal life’ of the Russian middle class,” according to Russian economist Sergei Guriev.
