The same jar, two markets: one follows it unit by unit, the other does not follow it at all. AI-generated illustration.
A guide to exporting cosmetics to Russia has been circulating among European cosmetics companies in recent weeks, promoted on LinkedIn by Antares Vision Group, an Italian traceability company. Russia has been under European Union sanctions since 2014, and under far wider ones since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Yet the guide breaks no rule: the EU bans the export to Russia of perfumes and cosmetics worth more than 300 euros per item, not the rest.
What makes the guide worth reading is something else. Since 2025 every cosmetic product sold in Russia must carry a unique code that the state follows from the border to the shop shelf. Brazil, a market with no sanctions at all and far more open to European brands, does not even follow its medicines one package at a time any more.
The full article explains what the EU sanctions actually forbid, how the Russian system works, why Russia's decision to allow parallel imports changes the picture, why Brazil went the other way, where Europe stands, and what a brand can do when no state keeps the map for it.