Photos like this have recently popped on social networks. Authors say they see unusually empty shelves in grocery stores in Moscow and other cities, as the coronavirus outbreak continues.
Some goods are indeed harder to come by in stores recently. Shelves previously filled with buckwheat, rice, pasta and noodles, flour, and toilet paper sometimes look deserted.
Some Moscow residents posted the following pictures on Instagram:
"Empty shelves in the @pyaterochka_official store on Presnya. Do you think there are real shortages of food or are people panicking in vain?" one user wrote.
[Today, the situation in stores in the capital is quite deplorable. You snooze, you lose. People grab everything: grains, pasta, flour, etc. in sufficient quantities and, as a result, you come to the store to buy something as a garnish and find empty shelves instead. Mostly, these are pensioners shopping.]
[I passed by a store yesterday to buy some food and things and to see if the rumours about empty shelves are legit and I saw this.]
[I really see something like this for the first time: In Auchan (a French hypermarket chain in Russia) half of the shelves are empty. Cereals, pasta, meat, and wet wipes disappeared. What’s going on?]
A mother of three from Moscow wrote on Instagram that she did not think there are real shortages of food and other products in Russian stores, yet she believed that she better to play safe and replenish her supplies, as she is afraid that the shortages may worsen if more people give in to the mass hysteria.
Officials are doing their best to reassure people that there won’t be shortages of food and other products in stores throughout the country. President Putin assured that there is no need to panic and that the supply to stores is as stable as always.
The government says it is conducting round-the-clock monitoring of availability of goods in stores and their prices.
Nonetheless, not everyone is comforted by these efforts and the reassuring messages from officials.
One user from Novosibirsk said she regretted her decision to listen to the reassuring messages and not to buy necessary products in time:
[Where are all the goods? Yesterday they said warehouses were full and we should refrain from buying anything for future use. This is one of the many stores of the ‘Maria-Ra’ chain in Novosibirsk. All the goods are locally produced in Altai and not imported. I didn’t buy anything — I don’t care about buckwheat. But what about basic products, such as sugar and salt? There are no pickled vegetables either. Thankfully I bought some pasta a week ago…]
In St. Petersburg, people noticed customers who were buying large quantities of goods while wearing protective masks. It is not clear if this behavior was a joke or if it was genuine.
[People are going mad.]
While some grocery chains send reassuring messages to people saying they have nothing to worry about, other businesses have seen an opportunity. For example, Auchan is offering already loaded shopping cart “packages” with a range of first necessity goods — grains, toilet paper, buckwheat, pasta, wet wipes, etc. — for a fixed sum (ca. $44).
The Pyatorochka supermarket chain, meanwhile, posted a reassuring message on its Instagram page. It reads: “We make sure you are always able to buy goods you need in our stores. To do this, we have increased the volume of supply and the frequency of replenishment. We would like to ask you for your understanding and not to worry. [Refilling the shelves these days] just takes a little more effort from our employees and it may take longer.
Our manufacturers are delivering goods on time and we have sufficient stock in our warehouses to meet all your needs for fresh and quality goods. If there are not enough products on the shelves in the store, do not worry — tomorrow they will be replenished with a new delivery from the warehouse. We ask you to soberly assess your real needs to resupply.”