By THOMAS
GROVE
MOSCOW—The Russian government launched a brutal crackdown on cheese
Thursday, in a display of culinary nationalism that marked a tightening of a
year-old ban on Western agricultural products.
Footage aired on national
television showed a bulldozer rumbling over a pile of bright yellow blocks of
cheese near Belgorod, a town on the Ukrainian border.
Svetlana Zaporozhchenko, spokeswoman for the government agency
responsible for the confiscation of blacklisted products along Russia’s border,
said the bulldozed cheese had likely been produced in one of the European
countries that sanctioned Russia for its annexation last year of Crimea, a
territory that juts into the Black Sea and previously belonged to Ukraine.
“The destruction has been completed, and after it is destroyed it is
buried,” Ms. Zaporozhchenko said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last year introduced a ban on U.S. and European Union foodstuffs, a move meant to thumb a nose at the West after Washington and its
allies introduced sanctions on Russia.
Mr. Putin tightened the restrictions, known as counter-sanctions in
Russia, at the end of July, promising to destroy, and in some cases incinerate,
the blacklisted foodstuffs at border points. Authorities Thursday also
threatened to incinerate Spanish ham and throw Polish apples into the nearest
landfill.
The Kremlin has defended the counter-sanctions, saying they would help
develop Russia’s own domestic agricultural industries and promote products that
Russia’s nascent middle class regularly pass up for status symbols like French
Gruyère and Italian salamis.
But as food prices have risen 21% since the beginning of the year due to
a weaker ruble, some politicians have called for the European goods to be
distributed among the poor. Communist party leader Gennady
Zyuganov even
called for the sanctioned foodstuffs to be sent to eastern Ukraine, where
Russia has supported separatists fighting Ukrainian troops.
Russia’s Agricultural Minister Alexander Tkachyov warned
that any distribution of the banned foodstuffs could play into the hands of the
black market. Russia, he said, was no longer guaranteeing the quality of
Western products.
“We are following international practice. If you break the law with
contraband then it should be destroyed. Let me emphasize, we cannot allow
products of suspicious quality to get to stores to feed our people,” Mr.
Tkachyov said on state TV.
The Russian agriculture minister said that by midday Thursday 28 metric
tons of apples and tomatoes from Poland had been destroyed, along with 40 tons
of apricots “of unknown origin.”
Though Moscow restaurateurs and grocery stores have found ways around
the ban by slapping “Made in Belarus” stickers on Italian mozzarella, Mr.
Tkachyov said shipments of sanctioned products have fallen by 90% since the
sanctions were put in place.
A pro-Kremlin youth group called “Eat Russian” has already taken to
enforcing the sanctions in Moscow markets. The group, headed by Yevgeniya
Smorchkova have
already carried out several raids on upper-end Moscow grocery stores, slapping
stickers on Italian cheeses and German cashew snacks.
Upscale wine bar Cork, which recently opened to rave reviews in one of
Moscow’s more chic neighborhoods, has yet to determine exactly how to
substitute menu items such as hams, meats and cheeses.
“We’re a small place and we haven’t felt any problems yet, we have
reserves in stock. But if we have to, there is nothing that can’t be
substituted with domestic products,” said manager Anton
Filippov.
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