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Russia’s president
Vladimir Putin lights candles at St Vladimir Equal-to-the-Apostles Church in
Moscow. Photograph: Alexei Nikolsky/EPA/Ria Novosti
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President seeks to reinforce ban on range of products from
countries that have imposed economic sanctions on Russia. The Kremlin is under
pressure to scrap draconian plans to destroy embargoed western agricultural
produce found entering Russia
and instead distribute the confiscated food among the poor and needy. Russian
president Vladimir
Putin issued a decree last week that aims to reinforce a ban on a
wide range of agricultural products from countries that have imposed economic
sanctions on Russia for its aggressive policies in Ukraine.
The Irish Times report
continues:
Under new rules coming
into force tomorrow, any contraband western meat, fish, dairy products or fresh
fruit and vegetables found on Russian territory will immediately be destroyed.
Mr Putin’s decree has met
with dismay in Russia, where an economic recession coupled with a steep fall in
the value of the rouble is eroding living standards. Russians who remember the
hungry years after the second World War are instinctively averse to even the
slightest waste of food.
Online petition
More than 51,000 people
have signed an online petition posted on Change.org urging Mr Putin to annul the
decree. Parliamentarians, they say, must urgently adopt legislation allowing
the transfer of confiscated food imports to the poor, sick and elderly.
Andrei Krutov,
a Russian parliamentary deputy, said contraband food imports seized by customs
should be sent to eastern Ukraine to help ease the crisis there. Other
officials warned it was folly to invest funds in food incinerators at a time
when the economy was flagging and, if nothing else, confiscated supplies could
be used as animal feed.
Mr Putin banned imports
of agricultural produce from the US, Canada,
the EU, Norway
and Australia
a year ago. This was in retaliation for imposing economic sanctions on Russia
after he ordered the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea. The tit-for-tat measures
were extended for another 12 months last week.
Russian officials have
framed the embargo as an opportunity for domestic farmers to increase their
share of the market and put more food on the nation’s tables.
However, Alexander
Tkachev, the Russian agriculture minister, complained during a
meeting with Mr Putin last week that the sanctions weren not bringing any such
benefit. Russian food producers were facing unfair competition from cut-price,
low-quality western produce illegally entering the market, he said.
Destruction plan
In response to Mr Putin’s
decree, Prime Minister Dmitri
Medvedev approved a detailed plan on Friday for the destruction of
embargoed agricultural produce by any means that did not harm the environment.
To ensure transparency,
he ruled that contraband food should be destroyed in the presence of
independent witnesses and recorded in photographs and video.
Mr Putin’s decree
signalled the launch of a crackdown on contraband food trading and would make
life harder for retailers and shoppers alike, said one grocer in a Moscow
market.
“It won’t stop me getting
hold of Italian parmesan and Parma ham,” she said, “but I’m going to have to be
more careful about hiding supplies.”
Like many Russians, she
suspects that corrupt officials will defy the president’s orders and sell
confiscated food to “their own kind”.
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