Russia's porous borders

Apparently half of Russia's cell phones are smuggled into the country:

Counterfeit phones currently make up 2 percent to 3 percent of the Russian market, according to estimates by Mobiset.ru, a telecoms portal. Total contraband phones, a category that includes both counterfeit and authentic phones that have been smuggled into the country, account for about half of all mobile phones currently sold in Russia.

It sounds shocking at first, but I wonder if the rate isn't much different from that of other ordinary products like cigarettes and computers.

And by the way, the English-language Moscow Times is a surprisingly good paper.