Apple says it does not sell in Russia, but iPhones are still easy to buy

In short: Apple says it does not sell new devices in Russia, but iPhones are widely available there through resale channels that are harder to trace.

What's going on

Apple paused product sales in Russia after the country’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. That means Apple says it is not officially selling new iPhones and other devices in Russia.

Even so, iPhones remain easy to find in Russia through the secondary market. This includes used and refurbished phones, sold on big online marketplaces, in carrier stores, in electronics chains, and on classifieds style resale sites.

Reporting suggests this resale market is large and still growing. One estimate projects 5.5 to 6.5 million refurbished smartphone sales in Russia in 2026. In the same year, one major resale platform said about 3 million users per month were buying second-hand electronics on its service.

A key reason these phones can keep circulating is that resale breaks the clean link between a device and its first official sale. It is like buying a car from a stranger instead of a dealership, the paperwork can be missing or incomplete. That makes it much harder to connect a specific device to an original buyer or store, especially when sales happen through informal resellers and classifieds.

What to watch

Some manufacturers and chipmakers say they try to monitor where products go through their official distributors. But parallel imports (goods brought in through third parties) and the growing resale market can still move devices into Russia. Watch for tighter rules from marketplaces and payment providers, and for new efforts to verify where high-demand electronics originally came from.

Source: NYTimes