Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
If you wanted something that was not on sale in the Ukraine, couldn't you order it from Russia and pay no import duties and get fairly speedy delivery, or? From what I hear/read both Moscow and St Petersburg have really good shopping nowadays - everything from super cheap stuff in markets, to top end designer clothes and electronics. I imagine most things that you might reasonably want, would be available to buy in Russia, unless you had some very specific need. I wouldn't know how the prices compare with elsewhere though. I expect many online Russian shops include the Ukraine in their sales area, right?

But they don't ship to Europe and do not accept non-American credit cards. Most American online shops have this policy, sadly.
Usually it works the other way round: electronic sales are a lot more developed in Ukraine, so no need for Ukrainians to visit Russian shops. On the contrary, Ukranian shops often speak Russian, and I constantly get .ua shops at the top of Google search results. Sadly, "Russian" shop=Moscow shop, and they mostly want to deliver within the Moscow only (no free at all!). And I never met an Ukrainian internet shop delivering to Russia. It's easier to buy on Ebay, even though it might take 2 months. I have had the bad experience with Moscow internet sellers (except Ozon, which however is expensive and limited in range of available products).

What surpises me a lot is why, on ebay, most shops situated in US ship within US only? It must be the same reason as Moscow shops ship within Moscow only, but what is the reason exactly? Somebody knows?