Russia Bans Agricultural Products from EU, USA, Australia, Norway, Canada

Local Editor

Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev has signed a decree on the full ban for imports of beef, pork, poultry meat, fish, cheese, milk, vegetables and fruit from Australia, Canada, the EU, the US and Norway.

The ban will last a year, starting August 7.

Medvedev also said that the country was considering a ban of transit flights for European and US Airlines to the Asia-Pacific region.

Western sanctions were a "dead-end track", but Russia has been forced to respond to the measures taken by the western countries, Medvedev added.
"We are actually speaking of an embargo on imports of whole categories of products from countries which have introduced sanctions against Russian organizations and individuals," Medvedev said.

Medvedev believed the year-long embargo Russia is imposing will boost domestic agriculture. He acknowledged that Russian farmers would have to come a long way, but said it was a unique opportunity to develop facilities to substitute for imports.
"We are only lagging behind in production of certain varieties of meat and milk. We have to catch up and our farmers are ready to do so, especially if we help them."

The Russian PM added that Moscow still had a lot of trading partners abroad, which it had not placed on the retaliatory sanctions list.
He also warned against possible attempts to use the situation to drive up prices.

"I would like to warn that attempts to gain from price speculation in this situation will be roughly stopped," Medvedev said.

Medvedev said he sincerely hoped "our partners' economic pragmatism will prevail over bad political decisions, and they will think before trying to frighten Russia and impose restrictions on it. And mutual trade and economic partnership will be restored in the volumes which existed before. We would have liked that to happen."

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team