By the beginning of December, Ukraine will already face a massive shortage of legal cigarettes. The reasons for the exp...

By the beginning of December, Ukraine will already face a massive shortage of legal cigarettes.

The reasons for the expected shortage are the continued targeted strikes by the enemy on logistics warehouses and tobacco production facilities.

There simply is no product, and the ability to replace domestic production with imports is exposed to the same strikes on warehouses.

Even the shipments companies bring in from their factories in the EU are being burned by the enemy.

According to market sources’ estimates, Imperial Brands, whose Kyiv factory was destroyed on 10 September, has already exhausted all warehouse stocks.

JTI, whose production in Kremenchuk was destroyed by the Russians on 22 September, has stocks only through November, and imports from European factories are planned only toward the end of December.

Philip Morris lost its main warehouses in Kyiv to drone strikes back in July, so it is now trying to keep minimal volumes of imported product and is operating on the brink of shortage. Its main factory in Kharkiv was closed back in 2022.

British American Tobacco, whose factory in Pryluky burned down on 7 September, is also “eating through” warehouse stocks and is not rushing to import large volumes of product, since even dispersing warehouse stocks across logistics centers does not help.

Every week new warehouses burn, so it is more advantageous for factories to operate in shortage than in surplus, which at any moment can be turned to ashes.

Back in September I wrote that the Russians deliberately chose tobacco production as one of the priority targets for missile and drone strikes, because a strike on this industry is a strike on the country’s budget.

I remind you that in 2025 the entire tobacco industry paid about 177 billion UAH in taxes to the budget of Ukraine, which provided 7% of all tax revenues of the country, which went in full to support the front.

Statistics for seven months of 2026 show payments to the treasury of 76.4 billion hryvnias.

These are very, very large sums for the budget and the front, and it is to disrupt these contributions that the enemy has targeted the tobacco industry.

Adding to the problems, and effectively helping the enemy, is the growing shadow market, which even in the face of missile and drone strikes has the advantage.

An extensive network of illegal production sites and a capillary distribution system for non-excise goods protect better than air defenses.

You cannot destroy what flows through your fingers and the budget.

But this is the main danger: when the legal industry is finally pushed out by the gray market.

At some point, against the backdrop of Russia’s strikes and the authorities’ inability to stop the gray market, the central offices of the big four will simply decide to wind down operations and exit the market.

And they will leave along with annual tax payments of 177 billion hryvnias, because those who remain will be playing a completely different game.

Precisely understanding these risks, Prime Minister Koretskyi outlined the tobacco industry as a priority area for de-shadowing and held a separate meeting on the matter with the industry and law enforcement.

The issue is no longer that the budget is losing 30 billion hryvnias to what the shadow economy steals.

The issue is that we could lose 7% of all the country’s budget payments provided by the legal tobacco industry if they decide to leave the country.

But do those to whom the Prime Minister entrusted solving this problem—the SBU Economic Security Bureau (BEB) and the National Police—understand this?

In the tobacco industry they have historically had their own, opposite math.

We will see, since Koretskyi gave the security forces a week to prepare a plan of action. And that week passed long ago.