Russia announced a ban on most fruit and vegetable imports from Poland on Wednesday and said it may extend the restrictions to the rest of the European Union, its first apparent retaliation to new Western sanctions imposed over Ukraine a day earlier.
The fresh produce items affected by the ban are:
– Apples, pears and quinces (customs code 0808);
– Apricots, cherries, peaches, nectarines, plums and sloes (0809);
– Cabbage, cauliflower, kohlrabi, kale and similar edible brassica types (0704);
– Other vegetables, except for mushrooms (0709).
Moscow, which buys more than 2 billion euros worth of EU fruit and vegetables a year making it by far the biggest export market for the products, said the ban was for sanitary reasons.
Polish fruit growers said the ban was political, although Russia denied this. Moscow has frequently been accused in the past of using sanitary inspections to restrict trade from countries with which it has political disputes. The EU said it was studying the announcement, describing it as a surprise.
The embargo amounts to political repression in response to the sanctions imposed by the European Union against Russia,” Poland’s agriculture ministry said in a statement.
The ban came a day after the European Union and United States imposed their first sanctions aimed at hitting broad sectors of the Russian economy, restricting sales of equipment for the oil and defense industries and limiting access by state-controlled banks to Western capital markets.
Source: Reuters, ITAR-TASSZ
