Krivenko achieved incredible success by focusing his supermarket chain on healthy and responsibly sourced products, as well as local producers. With more than 1,000 stores across Russia, the chain is now among the top-10 food retailers and continues to expand rapidly.

It was not immediately clear whether Moscow's forces had formally moved into the parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk region controlled by separatists – most analysts and Ukrainian officials have said that some Russian forces have long been informally established inside them.