The U420 chain of shops, promoted by bloggers, sells drugs disguised as souvenirs — an investigation
This was uncovered by investigative journalists at Bihus.Info, who sent products from the shops for laboratory testing.
The chain’s first physical shops opened in Kyiv in the spring of 2025. It has now expanded to around 30 outlets in the capital and other major Ukrainian cities — Kharkiv, Lviv, Dnipro and Odesa. Most of the shops’ customers are young people, particularly teenagers.
U420 has become well-known thanks to extensive advertising on social media, notably involving well-known bloggers with audiences numbering in the thousands. Among them are actor Taras Tsymbaliuk, Anna Alkhim, Olya Rybay, Yulia Shelyudko, Dana Green and others.
U420 shops position themselves as ‘cafés for connoisseurs of high-quality products based on legalised cannabis’. Among other things, one can purchase ‘souvenir products’ here — so-called hash and joints.
Journalists purchased these “souvenirs” from three different shops in the chain in Kyiv and sent them for analysis to two laboratories: a private one and a state-run one — the Scientific Research Expert-Criminalistics Centre of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The results of the laboratory analysis by the Ministry of Internal Affairs centre revealed that the ‘souvenirs’ from U420 contained a psychotropic substance, the circulation of which is prohibited by a resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers. This is a synthetic cannabinoid classified as a type of spice. Due to artisanal production, the composition of each dose is unpredictable, which inevitably leads to critical poisoning or cardiac arrest.
However, the substance was only added to the Cabinet’s list of banned substances on 5 February, whilst journalists had purchased the ‘souvenirs’ several days earlier. This may indicate that the product’s contents are regularly altered to adapt to current bans.
By law, the Ministry of Internal Affairs must now forward the findings of the study to the National Police, who must then launch an investigation.
