A Milanese baker, Matteo Cunsolo, offers a specialty “bread for peace” colored in blue and yellow, made with saffron and a blue flower, Clitoria ternatea.

“Even a 10-year-old boy came to buy a euro of bread,” Cunsolo said. “He wanted to help too.”

Goodwill, it seems, broke out everywhere.

But there is a risk that the mood will change.

In Vicenza, for example, entrepreneurs are increasingly concerned about rising energy and commodity prices, and the collapse of exports to Russia.

And all the more so after Brussels on Monday approved the fourth package of sanctions against Russia, including a ban on the export of luxury goods where Russia is an important market.

This is a big problem for Vicenza.

Located in the northeast of Italy, Vicenza is a wealthy province where exports to Russia exceeded 400 million euros between October 2020 and September 2021.

But now Brussels has banned the export of individual goods, including wines, leather goods, clothing and jewelery worth more than €300 per item – all very important sectors in the northeast of Italy, and in particular in Vicenza.

And this year, perhaps unsurprisingly, Russians and Ukrainians will be largely absent from one of the province’s flagship trade shows.

The best hotels confirm that, compared to previous years, there has been a drastic drop in bookings from Russian visitors. Vicenzaoro, an international gold and jewelry fair, is scheduled for Thursday in Vicenza, the provincial capital.

But what Claudia Piaserico, president of the national federation of gold and jewelery companies Federorafi, fears is a double whammy, where trade with Turkey, a major hub for Italian jewelery sales in the market Russian, also falls.

“Ankara accounts for 5% of our exports, around 370 million euros,” Piaserico said. “But if Turkey were to start struggling in the Russian market, of course we would be affected.”

Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Italy globally exported goods to Russia worth around 7 billion euros, said Giancarlo Corò, professor of economics at Ca’ Foscari University of La neighboring town of Venice.

“Now a lot of those exports are at risk,” he said.

“There are 20,000 companies in Italy that trade with Russia, and not all of them can take the hit easily.”

Luxury entrepreneurs across the country appear to be among the most worried.

Last week, an entrepreneur specializing in high-end women’s shoes, which makes 85% of its turnover in Russia, told a television news that it was at risk of going bankrupt, even before the latest sanctions.

Soaring energy and commodity prices are hitting Italy hard: factories and energy-intensive businesses across the country – from steel producers to fishing vessels – are shutting down.

Publishers are running out of paper for books and pizzerias of take-out pizza boxes. And due to media hysteria in some parts of the country, people are running to supermarkets to stock up on pasta, flour, sugar and sunflower oil.

Economist Massimo Nicolazzi, professor of economics at the University of Turin, said he was “more concerned about producers in the agri-food sector” than the luxury sector.

The situation was best summed up on Monday by Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco. According to him, the war in Ukraine is a tragic event that casts a shadow of grave uncertainty over the global and Italian economies.

But solidarity with Ukraine seems to last for a while longer.

This may partly be related to how Italy hosts the third largest Ukrainian community in the EU after Poland and Germany, with more than 200,000 people.

Former Milan footballer Andrij Ševčenko is a beloved celebrity.

And there is a large Ukrainian community in Vicenza, made up of entrepreneurs, caregivers and workers. Women wearing blue-yellow ribbons and cockades are a frequent sight on the streets of the city.

Tetyana Kuzhyk, who owns a laundry a stone’s throw from the central Renaissance square, Piazza dei Signori, has lived in Italy for more than twenty years but is originally from Lviv.

“I feel a lot of solidarity from the Italians,” Kuzhyk said.

“Here in Vicenza there is a Ukrainian church, Saint Joseph, and a lot of people brought whatever they could, food, medicine, clothes,” she said. “We have already sent five church trucks to the various refugee camps.”