Online grocery sales growth in Russia slowed sharply in early 2026. Mobile internet outages are partly to blame.
Growth in Russia’s online grocery sales slowed sharply in the first quarter of 2026, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported, citing figures from the information and consulting agency Infoline.
Online food retail turnover reached 482 billion rubles in the period, up 23.9% year over year — the weakest quarterly growth recorded at least since early 2023. Sales had risen 26.3% in the first quarter of 2025 and 55.6% in the same period a year before that.
Infoline attributed the deceleration to rising costs for retailers and connectivity disruptions in parts of Russia.
The Association of Internet Trade Companies also cited mobile internet outages as a drag on order volumes.
In different regions of Russia, mobile internet has been regularly cut off over the past year. This has also affected the availability of communications in general. Authorities explain that they are restricting mobile internet access due to attacks by Ukrainian drones. The most recent major outages were observed during the May holidays.
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