MOSCOW, August 7 (RIA Novosti) – Russia will find instruments to prevent possible threats of breaching its embargo on food products imported from the European Union through member states of the Eurasian Customs Union, Russian Agriculture Minister Nikolai Fyodorov said Thursday.
“It’s in our interests to comply with this embargo within the Customs Union. We are in talks with our colleagues from Belarus and Kazakhstan, and we have mechanisms already in place and additional ones that we can agree on so that we comply with the decisions that will be made by the Customs Union members. I think that we will be fully civilized in finding the instruments in order to block possible breaches in the regime that the country was forced to make over the last few days,” Fyodorov said.
The minister said that the sanctions imposed by Russia on the EU would not affect inflation.
“The threat is fundamental and strategic and we don’t predict that this will have any negative effects on inflation,” Fyodorov said.
The minister added that the list of banned imports may change in the future, but would not be expanded.
“The list may be changed, but as far as I see this and understand the situation from the point of view of the country’s leadership, then today there is no perspective in expanding [the list]: there could be a decrease or limiting,” Fyodorov said.
Earlier in the day, the Russian government published a list of agricultural products banned for import for one year from the United States, the European Union, Canada, Australia and Norway. The list includes beef, pork, poultry meat, fish, seafood, milk, dairy products, vegetables and fruit. The embargo does not include infant foods and products.
The “blacklist” was published after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed on Wednesday an order on economic measures to protect the country's security. The decree banned for a year imports of agricultural and food products from countries that have imposed sanctions on Russia.
The European Union, the United States and some other countries have compiled sanctions lists against Russian companies, banks, politicians, as well as the financial, energy and defense sectors of the Russian economy. The move has been linked to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
Moscow has repeatedly called the measures counterproductive and stressed that Russia was never involved in the Ukrainian conflict.
