LVIV, Ukraine — At his compact stall in Lviv’s main open-air food market, Ihor Korpii arranged jars of blueberries he and his wife had picked from a nearby forest in an attractive display. Fragrant dill and fresh peas harvested from his garden lay in neat piles on a table.
A school teacher who survives on a modest salary, Mr. Korpii sells produce during the summers to supplement his family’s income. But this year, he had to raise prices by more than 10 percent to offset rising fuel and fertilizer costs caused by the Russian invasion. Now buyers are few and sales have plummeted by more than half.
“The war has increased the cost of almost everything, and people are buying much, much less,” Korpii said, waving weather-beaten hands at a pile of unsold carrots. “Everyone, including us, is tightening their belts,” he added. “They are trying to save money because they don’t know what the future will bring.”
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the prices of food, energy and raw materials have scaled around the worldworsening global inflation and inflicting financial hardship on millions of vulnerable people.
Few countries are feeling the bite as much as Ukraine itself, where Russia’s deadly campaign of attrition is racking up economic havoc as well as a devastating humanitarian cost.
The prices here are jumped more than 21 percent for a year, one of the highest rates on the continent, as attacks on critical infrastructure Y russian occupation of major industrial and agricultural producing regions in the Southeast wreak havoc on supply chains. Fuel prices rose 90 percent from a year earlier, while food costs rose more than 35 percent, according to the National Bank of Ukraine.
While international institutions have provided nearly $13 billion in financing for Ukraine, the support only goes so far: the central bank has devalued the hryvnia, the country’s currency by 25 percent against the US dollar to avert a financial crisis, a move that will make many goods even more expensive.
That’s not good news for companies like CSAD-Yavoriv, a family-owned trucking company that transports commercial goods, as well as vital grain and humanitarian supplies, in Ukraine and beyond European borders.
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Trucks have become critical for transportation after Russia blockaded Ukrainian ports and bombed train tracks. The price of fuel has tripled since the February invasion, in part because Russia also destroyed numerous Ukrainian fuel depots, said Marichka Ustymenko, deputy director of the company.
Filling up a truck’s fuel tank now costs about 850 euros (about $870), up from 300 euros before the war, Ustymenko said, and manufacturers are shifting that higher shipping cost onto products ranging from diapers to even furniture. Import prices also increased due to the devaluation of the national currency, which oppressed struggling Ukrainians.
“The cost of products is very high, but people’s wages have remained the same,” said Ms. Ustymenko. The humanitarian aid sent to Ukraine in the trucks of her company arrived at the beginning of the war, which helped offset some of her pain. But that has slowed to a trickle, she added.
Not everyone is hit hard. At Citadel, a hilltop luxury hotel in Lviv, the parking lot was filled with Mercedes-Benzes and other luxury cars owned by wealthy Ukrainians on a recent day. People who work in the country thriving tech sector they also have plenty of work.
But for older people with fixed pensions and millions of Ukrainians who have been displaced or whose wages or jobs have been cut, finances are being squeezed.
Lviv, a UNESCO World Heritage site A huge draw for tourists before the war, it has been spared heavy Russian attacks, attracting a flood of internally displaced Ukrainians. Rents have soared in cities considered safe, while the price of furniture and electronics has soared as Ukrainians who fled the country begin to return.
The war has pushed up food prices dramatically. a calling Borsch index, which measures the cost of ingredients used to make Ukraine’s national dish, rose 43 percent in June from a year earlier. Russia’s occupation of rich agricultural regions has delayed harvests of beets, the key ingredient in borscht, and other vegetables, almost tripling the cost of some products.
On a cobblestone street in the historic heart of Lviv, borsch, a cafe once teeming with wealthy European visitors, is struggling to manage. After Russia’s invasion, the cafe’s owners poured money into making 300 free servings of borscht a day for Lviv soldiers, said Yuliya Levytsko, a manager.
Today, many customers are displaced Ukrainians on a budget, so the cafe has raised prices for the maroon soup much less than it costs to make.
Ms. Levytsko said that her own family had been stripped down to the basics.
His home grocery store account accounts for about three-quarters of his modest monthly salary, up from just over half before the war. Her husband’s car gas bill is up nearly 30 percent. They are both looking for a second job, and Ms. Levytsko now records every penny they spend.
“We don’t know what our situation will be tomorrow,” Ms. Levytsko said, adding that many Ukrainians were saving to prepare for what they fear could be a harsh winter, with fuel and food prices rising even higher.
Back at the outdoor food market, butchers stood behind refrigerated cases full of meat, waiting for customers. Prices for beef, pork, chicken and dairy products, sourced from farms in western Ukraine that have largely remained untouched by Russian strikes, had risen only modestly. Still, business was slow.
“The prices of these products are not higher, but people are cutting them drastically,” said Lesia, a meat seller at the market for 20 years, who, like many older Ukrainians, was reluctant to give her full name out of fear. to attract attention. . “Still, we can’t give up,” she said. “After all the things Russia has done to us, we will never give up.”
Stalls that used to be run by meat and vegetable farmers from Kharkiv and Kherson lay dark, shuttered after their owners were driven out of business by the Russian invasion.
Yoroslava Ilhytska, a cheese vendor, gazed at counters once bustling with the activity of her missing neighbors, bare save for an old, dust-gathering scale. “They were bombed,” she said. “They lost all their assets and a factory, so they had to close.”
Hot spices, dark chocolates and dried figs scented the air from overflowing plastic containers nearby. Such delicacies, imported from Turkey, Chile and Azerbaijan, were less sought after and more expensive because of the war, said Oksana, a job keeper who gave only her first name.
Dried dates used to be imported directly from Turkey via the Black Sea and arrived at your stall within days. With Russia’s blockade of Black Sea ports, dates now take more than a week to move overland through Europe before crossing into western Ukraine, and cost up to a third more.
“You can see the impact: Only two people have bought anything in the last half hour,” Oksana said, surveying the mostly empty aisles between stalls. “People can live without my products: They are not essential. Cabbage, cucumbers, dairy products, those are it,” she said.
“The war has impacted us catastrophically,” added Oksana, who said she spent much of her time looking for ways to keep her spirits up. Her face lit up as she described finding pleasure in making homemade scented soaps, scented with flowers and spices. But the increase in the price of oils and other raw materials had limited her hobby.
His smile dissolved into a look of steel. “We are all fighting,” Oksana said. “If only we could, we would tear the enemy to pieces with our bare hands.”
“But as long as there is one Ukrainian left standing,” he continued, “they will never win.”