UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 14, 2018. Koltsovo Airport Customs (Yekaterinburg) had to process 70 million shipments this year so far, which made Yekaterinburg the country’s No.2 in the national shipment-acceptance sector (No 1. is Moscow), head of V.A. Sorokin Koltsovo Customs Anatoly Timoshenkov said at a press conference.

According to Timoshenkov, 90% of all the consignments are goods locals order online: clothing, footwear, gifts, gadget accessories, and various spare parts.

As the number of shipments to Yekaterinburg keeps rising, so does the number of freight forwarding-related violations: 440,000 instances occurred this year alone. For one, the number of smuggling attempts rose from 1,200 in 2017 to 3,000 in 2018.

The most frequently occurring cases are orders for bladed weapons and potent drugs.

‘In 99% of cases, the law gets infringed upon because private customers are not aware of the regulations they are actually violating. There’s no criminal intent in any of this, only ignorance,’ Timoshenkov explained.