Visitors to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Singapore Lazada and Redmart sites can find several products from Russia, including 120-gram jars of salmon roe for $11 ($8), in addition to 460 ml bottles of hair conditioner for $2.49 .
At other grocery stores in Singapore, similarly sized jars of roe range from S$15.90 to S$44. At Shopee, a subsidiary of Sea Ltd., online shelves are stocked with bargain Russian-made waffle cakes and hazelnut milk chocolates.
Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
While several countries have bans on imports of products originating in Russia, Singapore’s sanctions are limited to fundraising activities for the advantage of the Russian government and exports from the city-state that might directly contribute to the war effort. There isn’t any ban on the sale of Russian food products on the island, and there aren’t any sanctions on Russian food exports worldwide.
Representatives for Lazada and Shopee didn’t reply to a request for comment.
According to the Yale School of Management, greater than 1,000 international corporations all over the world have publicly announced that they’re voluntarily withdrawing from Russia beyond absolutely the minimum legally required by international sanctions.
“Singaporeans could also be against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but they usually are not against Russian goods,” said Tommy Koh, ambassador general at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “In Singapore, trade is our lifeblood. We trade with every country whether we like it or not.”
Sovan Patra, a senior lecturer on the School of Social Sciences at Singapore Management University, agreed that Singaporeans’ pragmatism likely resulted in a distinction between the moral view of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the sensible issue of buying goods of Russian origin.
Singaporeans “are generally not the type of people who boycott,” he said.
