Thanks, Biden! Russia Sanctions Kill NY Delivery Business, Leave 900 Americans Out of Work

President Putin and other officials have repeatedly warned the US and its allies that sanctions on Russia would inevitably rebound on the populations of those countries that implemented them. Spiraling inflation, out-of-control fuel prices and talk of a new “great recession” appear to have validated these concerns.

Sanctions pushed New York City-based food delivery service Buyk into bankruptcy, with all 900 of its employees fired.

“No one was thinking we wouldn’t have a job,” Yusuff Alabi-Ajidagba, head of retail operations at the now-defunct company, which was a subsidiary of Russian delivery giant Samokat, said, recalling the ordeal to the Washington Post. “I don’t think anyone even knew what sanctions meant. No one believed it was going to impact the world the way it did.”

Buyk filed for bankruptcy in March, two weeks after the US slapped crushing new sanctions on Russia’s Sberbank to cut the banking giant off from the US financial system, and depriving the company of much-needed bridge financing.

Alabi-Ajidagba said the company’s US-based employees have stayed in touch via group chats, with the majority facing difficulties such as loss of rent money, child care, and transportation. He admitted that he himself has been forced to cut out “all the bougie things,” including trips and meals at restaurants, and has stopped sending money to family back home in Nigeria.

Yana Pesotskaya, Byuk’s other head of operations, who holds dual Russian-French nationality, said some of the employees have faced difficulties finding new jobs amid rampant anti-Russian sentiment. “It’s not aggressive; it’s a very cautious attitude right now [from employers]: ‘Better not go with that’, rather than anything to do with my skills or who I am as a person,” she said.

Saren Stiegel, Buyk’s former director of learning said the company had nothing to do with the “Russian oligarchs” the US said it was targeting, and that “the wrong people lost their jobs.”

Fridge No More, another New York-based delivery company with Russian roots and investors, was also forced to shut down as a result of the sanctions with all 600 of its employees laid off.

Buyk and Fridge No More are just two firms with Russian links to be fatally wounded in the West’s sanctions salvos against Moscow, and are an example of the restrictions’ broader impact on the US and Europe. In recent months, German industry leaders have warned the country to prepare for the “worst crisis since the Second World War” amid Brussels’ calls for an energy embargo on Russia, while Brits have been told to prepare for food shortages and “fuel poverty” as prices skyrocket. In the US, President Biden has repeatedly referred to spiraling food and fuel costs as “Putin’s price hike.”

The Russian president appealed to Americans and Europeans to address Biden’s claims in March, saying that “the truth is that the current problems that millions of people in the West face are the result of many actions by the ruling elites of their states, their mistakes, myopia and ambitions…These elites are not thinking about how to improve the lives of their citizens. They are obsessed with their own selfish interests and surplus profits…Today, the entire planet has to pay the price for the ambitions of the West, its attempts by any means to maintain its illusive dominance.”

The West has slapped Russia with more than 7,845 new sanctions over the past three months in response to the Ukraine crisis. On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the European Union to prepare a new, seventh package of sanctions against Russia as soon as the sixth steps into effect.