As political tensions heighten over the Russia-Ukraine conflict, warnings the world's largest country will ban fresh fruit from Poland, the Netherlands and Moldova are circulating and causing some alarm in the produce sector.

However, it is too early to tell whether talk of such bans on Dutch and Polish fruit imports will actually amount to anything, according to Moscow-based RK Marketing director Irina Koziy.

She believes that despite the debate surrounding potential bans for Dutch fruit and Polish apples in particular, Russia will not necessarily go through with such far-reaching and large-scale prohibitions because of the impact it would have on the country’s fresh fruit supplies.

"Let’s see how it goes because technically if there is going to be such a ban starting later this year, Russia will feel a significant lack of fruit because the fruits grown in Russia are not usually stored for a very long time," says Koziy, who also heads up Fruitnews.ru.

"Poland is a very large supplier including such important fruit for the market as apples. I don't really see how other countries will be able to replace such large volumes so hopefully this will not happen.

"On the other side, if there was a ban it would of course damage Polish farmers because Russia is a significant market for them too and it would be very difficult to redirect such amounts elsewhere."

Koziy adds that there has been much debate over recent months about banning imports from European countries, but it is very difficult to determine whether such bans are related to legitimate pest contamination concerns over imports into Russia or whether the debate is being fueled by the political situation.

"There are several messages that there has been some sort of pest in some shipments of apples and cabbages from Poland recently.

"What the authorities usually do is to inform a foreign country that they are not satisfied with the quality of the products and ask them for certain measures to be taken to ensure the quality of the products coming in later, but if that doesn’t happen then products can be banned."

Koziy first heard of a potential ban for Polish produce back in May, but again doesn't feel like this would turn into a reality because Poland is such a huge supplier of fresh fruit.

"They have been talking about a ban for Poland for a while already but I don’t think that they are going to ban Polish products because we significantly rely on Poland as a supplier, particularly of fresh fruit.

"More than half of our apples come from Poland and we had lower crops this year making Poland even more important as a supplier.

"I guess anything can happen at this point and the situation is emotionally-driven. It’s really difficult to understand what is a real problem and what is just a strategy. Let’s see how this is going to develop over the coming weeks and months."

Russian news agency ITAR-TASS has reported that veterinary and phytosanitary watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor could ban fruit from some EU countries within one to two weeks and quotes the service’s chief Alexey Alexeyenko.

"We consider limiting supplies from some countries such as Poland, Moldova and the Netherlands," he is reported as telling ITAR-TASS.

Photo: Gmoorenator, via Flickr Creative Commons

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