Panic buying sweeps occupied Crimea as food reserves dwindle - video interview

This situation in the occupied peninsula may be a side effect of Ukrainian attacks, as Kyiv expands its medium-range strike campaign against major Russian logistics routes, forcing Moscow to ban military cargo on key highways and threatening a "cascading impact" on future offensives, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote a day earlier.

"Food problems are not yet recorded on a massive scale because they have certain logistical reserves in the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea," Chistikov clarified.

"But they admit that these reserves will only last for a few weeks, and if the situation does not change, it will worsen."

The Kremlin puppet authorities are trying to calm consumers down, but to no avail.

"Driven by panic, they are starting to buy up food, cereals, sugar, and salt. Initially, when such information appeared, everyone thought it was just active dissemination by the Ukrainian side; that's how the occupiers tried to frame it. But later, confirmations began arriving from the local population," Chistikov noted.

Crimean residents have started to self-organize, searching stores across the peninsula for scarce goods and sharing the information among themselves.