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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
The Polish interior ministry has placed a discount supermarket chain and its Russian owners on the sanctions list. According to Poland’s National Tax Administration (KAS), which filed the sanction request, the company “indirectly supports Russia’s aggression in Ukraine”.
Torgservis PL recently returned to Poland with its discount supermarket MyPrice, the first of which opened in late 2024. The chain previously operated in Europe under the name Mere but had to shut down after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
🚫 Kolejny podmiot wraz z jego udziałowcami został wpisany na polską listę sankcyjną na podstawie wniosków Szefa KAS.
Zwalczamy omijanie sankcji w różnych branżach. W tym przypadku została udaremniona próba powrotu na nasz rynek rosyjskich dyskontów.https://t.co/Kd5vS9aQcR— Krajowa Adm. Skarbowa (@KAS_GOV_PL) April 25, 2025
The sanctions have been introduced against Torgservis PL and Sergey and Andrey Shnayder. The two men, who are brothers, have a total of 28,952 shares in the company that are worth over 13 million zloty (€3 million). According to KAS, they are already under sanctions in Ukraine.
Torgservis currently operates only one MyPrice store in Siedlce. Another store was opened in 2024 in Olszewo-Borki in eastern Poland but has since closed down, according to news website Wirtualna Polska.
The website also reported recently that another store, allegedly operated by the same company, has opened in Warsaw under the Polish name Moja Cena (My Price).
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The discount supermarket chain previously functioned in Europe under the name Mere, with ten stores operating from 2020 in Poland, all of which closed down in 2022 following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The owners of Torgservis, Sergey and Andrey Shnayder, are Russian citizens. They also own the Svetofor discount supermarket chain, which has over 2,000 stores in Russia, according to Forbes.
According to KAS, their company “has financial means and economic resources which indirectly support Russia’s aggression in Ukraine”. It said that the sanctions will “indirectly reduce the revenue of the budget of Russia, from which the aggression against Ukraine is financed”.
KAS also noted that the brothers were sanctioned by Ukraine in 2021 and 2022 because “they hold shares in numerous companies operating in Russia”.
Warsaw has announced it will renovate a former Russian diplomatic compound known as “Spyville” and turn it into flats for public servants.
The city had hoped to hand it over to the Ukrainian community but could not owing to the building's poor conditionhttps://t.co/J9438EMMFK
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) January 21, 2025
Being placed on the Polish sanctions list means that a person or entity is subject to the freezing of all financial assets and economic resources, excluded from public procurement and tender processes, and prohibited from participating in activities aimed at circumventing these restrictions.
Foreign nationals are also listed as “undesirable on the territory of Poland.”
KAS regularly monitors the Polish market to uncover activities that violate the sanctions imposed on Russia and Belarus. Currently, close to 100 persons and entities are included on the Polish sanctions list.
During the ongoing war in Ukraine, Poland has been one of the main proponents of introducing “the broadest possible sanctions” against Russia as well as transferring frozen Russian assets to Ukraine.
Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Main image: Stolbovsky/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 3.0)
Agata Pyka is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland. She is a journalist and a political communication student at the University of Amsterdam. She specialises in Polish and European politics as well as investigative journalism and has previously written for Euractiv and The European Correspondent.
