Russia's economy is hurting

**Bisi Adebayo** (0:02)
Petrol pumps are running dry in Russian-occupied Crimea. It's World Business Express from the BBC World Service, I am Bisi Adebayo. A decade after Brexit, how have businesses felt the impact? And Europe's airport bosses fear a new border system could mean long queues ahead.
Ukraine has stepped up its attacks on economic targets inside Russia in recent weeks, disrupting fuel supplies and transport links in some parts of the country. While reports suggest the shortages are particularly severe in occupied Crimea, where restrictions on civilian traffic are affecting the movement of people and goods. I spoke to Igor Bolov, who's founder of the Russian logistics company Arnis Transport Group based in Moscow.

**Igor Bolov** (0:50)
Recently, a lot of Russian trucks was attacked by Ukrainian forces. Unfortunately, even trucks with military cargoes like e-commerce was attacked, and that pushed the rates up. So it became more difficult to find people to go there, but still cargo goes to Crimea. But we need some efforts to protect the trucks from air attacks. For now, it's more like a kind of inconvenience that we have to deal with, because the rates increased for about 50%.
But of course, the flow itself came a little bit less.

**Bisi Adebayo** (1:31)
What about the drivers themselves now? Are they asking for more money to be able to go to Crimea with these difficulties they're facing there?

**Igor Bolov** (1:38)
It's not like Mad Max movie, but of course, they asked for more money, and a lot of people actually agree to work for bigger money. And the cost of transportation in the price of goods probably increased from 5% till 7%, 10%.

**Bisi Adebayo** (1:57)
Looking ahead, if these attacks continue, what's your biggest concern for Russia's logistics sector?

**Igor Bolov** (2:04)
Well, I think if that threat remains, we will use smaller trucks that is not so distinguishable for airborne intelligence. But anyway, we will find something. But for now, we are looking for a solution.

**Bisi Adebayo** (2:21)
Igor Bolov there. Well, my colleague, Victoria Holland, told me how people living in Crimea are dealing with the situation.

**Victoria Holland** (2:28)
In Crimea itself, all petrol stations are closed down, and we servicing only special transport like emergency services, or public transport, or children's buses, for example. Currently, there is no shortages of food or water in Crimea because the local government predict the situation. So, we were saving some amount of products and food and medicine. Private car owners are not allowed to fill up their cars. And moreover, I heard that most of them have been recommended to lock their cars and put the special locks on their tongues, because right now it's a common crime when people are stealing petrol from each other cars.

**Bisi Adebayo** (3:09)
How bad is that affecting movement? Do we have a lot of people who drive cars more than those who use public transport?

**Victoria Holland** (3:16)
In this region, there are people who are using only public transport and people who always using their own private cars. However, right now, I heard that a lot of car owners just keep their cars in garages, and they're trying to use more public transport just to save some fuel, and they all started to use public transport or working from home. Everyone won't go back to normal, where everyone can operate and live their lives, and especially in a high peak touristic season. In Crimea, we are looking for tourists.

**Bisi Adebayo** (3:51)
That was Victoria Holland. Well, time to bring in Fiona Sincota, who's Senior Market Analyst at StoneEx. Fiona, well, let's start with this sell-off we've seen with sharp falls in tech stocks from Seoul to New York. What's driving this sudden change?

**Fiona Sincota** (4:05)
Yeah, basically, these sell-off in global tech stocks has been driven by worries over the AI trade, which is looking a little bit overdone recently. We've seen very impressive gains so far this year, but concerns over costs involved in the AI build-out, monetization and when we might see a return on these investments have prompted heavy profit taking.

**Bisi Adebayo** (4:27)
And SpaceX has lost more than 16% of its value in just two weeks after its market debut.

**Fiona Sincota** (4:34)
Yes, we've seen a strong reversal in SpaceX. I mean, it's still very volatile following the IPO, but basically yesterday we heard it revealed plans for a bond offering as it looks to raise $20 billion to fund AI ambitions. And this comes just after it raised $75 billion in its IPO. So really there are worries over the ability for the company to fund its huge spending commitments required for AI.

**Bisi Adebayo** (5:01)
Fiona Sincota, thank you.